Page 107 of Red Flag, Green Light

Because that’s my job.

And the people in the stories aren’t supposed to bereallike this. I’m supposed to be able to joke about shoulder complexes without worrying that I’m actually hurting someone or undermining their very real efforts. But, genuinely, what part of having adark romance male leaddoing hundreds of pushups a day in a last ditch effort to get the shoulders his object of affection wants screams anything butjoke?

I do not know how to correctly break this suffocating silence. So I just say, “How…many pushups are you doing each day?”

His shoulders bunch. “Um.” His hand shakes as he runs it through his hair. “Uh.” He wets his lips, reaches for his tea, forgets about his soup, and knocks it all over his floor. He swears, closes his eyes, and whispers, “I’m so sorry. You…you made that for me. I’m so sorry. I…” He begins to push his blankets aside. “There’s towels in my closet. I’ll…”

I open his closet before he can step out of bed into the damp puddle on his floor. “This one?” I ask, lifting a towel off a stack beneath a handful of hanging leather jackets.

“Y-yes.”

Crossing the room to reach his bedside, I crouch at the mess and sop it up, hoping there aren’t gaps in the wood flooring that would result in worse problems later.

“Ceres,” he croaks, “I…”

Lifting my face, I find his fragile green eyes.

Every scrap of worry and fear from his male lead in the book he’s been writing ignites in him tenfold. His male lead’s concerns ofshe’ll never love me, she’ll never want me, not when I’m like this, not when I’m likethisblast in my ears.

His male lead knows it’s not normal to have cameras pointed at his neighbor. He knows it. His male lead hates himself for it. His male lead is terrified of losing the woman he loves. His male lead saves clips of his female lead working in her garden or reading her books and watches them on loop to find something like peace sometimes. He’s so…so…sobroken. Desperate. Scared. He studies people. Not just his female lead. He’s kept notes since middle school about people, desperate to learn them, to figure out why they didn’t like him, to figure out what it was he was doing wrong.

He watches her because heneedsto know she’s okay. He watches her because loving her from afar is all he believes he’ll ever be allowed. He watches her, trying to study how he can possibly be what she needs. His notes about her are tear-stained compilations of him trying to figure out if he should give up, or if he’s worth loving anyway.

Even if he’s justhim.

In the story, thus far, the characters have only interacted in brief ways. He’s crossed paths with her at the store and helped her find something she needed. He’s saved her from a rude guywhen they happened to be at the same cafe. Most recently, he’s left orchids on her porch with nothing but his email in the note, signed from a Secret Admirer.

Right now, they’re emailing, and he sends her heart-wrenching love letters while they get to know one another. He replays every word she says to him in his mind as he falls asleep each night, and insanity crawls ever closer.

The descent into madness has beendelicious, and I’ve been leaving about seven thousanddoes he kidnap her now? how about now?comments all over the document. Because I am feral.

I am feral.

And Mars is just scared, insecure, and fighting—every single day—to be kind and respectful despite it. With about negative percentages of help from me.

I do not know what to say to a man like this.

I do not know how to be loved like this, to the brink of insanity, on the precipice of what only belongs in fiction. This is probably a deeply unsafe and unhealthy situation.

But it’s too late for me to pretend I am any more sane than him.

My lips part. “How many pushups?”

Raw, he replies, “A hundred and three…”

“Every day?”

“Yes.”

“Even…” I glance at the thermos of tea, the fire honey, the trash full of tissues.

His body droops. “Yes…Jove peeled me off the floor before you came in. I…” His eyes close, and his head drops into his hands. “Ineedto be enough for you, Ceres. I don’t know how to explain that in a way that…that isn’t just…problematic.”

I love problematic.

Problematic is great.

Problematic ispasses out on the floor while sick trying to attain actually probably impossible body standards for a girl who barely smiles or does anything at all for you in return.

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