Page 101 of Red Flag, Green Light

Moonlight paints her hair in a most becoming shade, so I draw several strands to my lips. “Are you going to invite your father as well? I need to know how large to make the carrot cake.”

She collapses against my chest. “Why are you like this?” Her shoulders sag. “Why amIlike this? What is wrong with me? What is medically and clinically wrong with me?”

“Because something has to be mentally wrong with you for you to want to marry me?”

She huffs. “Don’t take this the wrong way, but yes.”

I arch a brow at my dear wife-to-be’s deflated back. “I am uncertain there is arightway to take that statement, Ceres.”

“Mars, please. Our relationship started with you walking into my house and bribing me into helping you plan a Flag Day festival. Since then, you’ve actuallybrokeninto my home with a lock pick set, and I’ve just let you.”

“Well, if you didn’t want me to visit unexpectedly, you should have been more clear.”

“I was clear. I stopped keeping my spare key outside. And you got the message. And then I wasso lonelyI actually got mad that you didn’t break in sooner.”

“Well, I mean… I’m sure all that is…normal? And absolutely mentally stable behavior.” It’s just book girlie behavior, really.

“We’re insane, not stupid,” she mutters. Pulling from my arms, Ceres flops against the blankets and pillows piled around us and covers her face with her hands. “Ugh.”

Cold, I look between my now-empty loving embrace and my reluctant fiancée. I stretch my fingers. I blink. “Ceres, dear.”

She grunts. Articulate.

“Correct me if I’m wrong, but did you not provide your mother with an ode to my character’s charms at length?”

“I was stress rambling.”

“You were stress rambling lies? You don’t actually think I’m kind or a good cook?”

She drags her palms down her face and glares at me. “Does that matter nearly as much as the fact that sometimes I justwake upto you cooking in my kitchen? Unannounced? Without permission? After we’ve known each other for a measly few months? And this behavior started after barely a few weeks?”

“Your breakfast intake has risen exponentially. The number of meals you have in a given day has gone from point five to roughly two, on average. You’re healthier. Your life is better.”

Her arms cross. “I never said it wasn’t. I said I have to be mentally unwell to be chill with the way you’ve gone about it.”

My lungs fill as I open my mouth, but she’s not wrong. And I have found the right way to take her previous statement. Allowing breath to leave me, I comb my fingers through my hair. “So, we’re both mentally unstable in ways that improve one another’s life. Isn’t that a really good reason to get married?”

Her glare gets more glare-y, and I suspect she’ll provide me with a sensible response that enlightens me to very good points on why we should, absolutely,notget married. Subverting all expectations, she quips, “Well,yeah. But,still.”

Oh-ho? How delightful.

I beam. “You are being illogical.”

“I amnot. This entire situation is illogical. I shouldnotbe kinda okay with the idea of marrying someone I haven’t known very long who is an unconvicted criminal on a near-daily basis. I’m appalled with myself.”

“You’re appalled because you’re okay with it, not because you aren’t?”

She snatches a pillow, covers her face, and screams into it. Iskillfully dodge the projectile when it comes flying toward me. Clearly, my love is having amoment. But that’s fine. She can have as many moments as she wants. I hope to enjoy them for the rest of our lives.

“I’m calm,” she says, puffing a stray hair off her forehead. “I’m rational. I’m fine. Everything is fine. This is fine.”

“Convincing.”

She throws another pillow at me. “We need to have a serious conversion. Pull it together.”

We are in a blanket nest on a trampoline. It would be very hard to be unserious at such a time as this, I think.

“Would you be moving in with me?” she asks.

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