Page 28 of Red Flag, Green Light

Sara: Tall girls are never kidnapped because the male lead would have to break the tall girlie’s legs to get them to fit in his trunk.

Rouge: So I’ll also be breaking genre standards by having a creative male lead. Fabulous.

Rouge: Aren’t you tired of giant men and tiny women and the same boring plot line over and over and over? Modest-shouldered men need hope. Tall women need to see themselves in romance stories.

Sara: Modest-shouldered men should do more pushups. And tall women don’t need to worry that they’ll be kidnapped ontop of everything else they have to deal with.

Rouge: I feel the need to remind you that my original story had nothing to do with kidnapping. It was about a pining man, fighting his natural disposition for toxicity.

Sara: Boring. Embrace the toxicity. Embrace it. Become even more toxic.

Rouge: Who hurt you?

What a question.

Sara: No one.

Sara: And that’s the problem.

Sara: Where’s my male lead? Who’s going to set the world on fire for me and marvel at the burn scars it leaves upon my skin? When you’re capable and smart and outgoing and conventionally attractive enough to pass as acceptable to every Joe Schmo out there, you fall into a pit of deep mediocrity. I don’t want an average man to love me pitifully to such an extent that he sticks around through our arguments and annoyances. I want a whirlwind of a man who knows me inside out, prevents annoyances before they happen because he’s in my skull, and loves me beyond my own comprehension, right to madness.

Rouge: You want a fantasy.

Sara: Yep.

Sara: All girls do.

Sara: And fantasies?

Sara: Are not “modest shouldered.”

Chapter Nine

I might not bring shoulders to the function, but I do bring carrot cake.

Mars

Afternoon pushups.

My arms shake as I struggle to complete a fifth push up in the center of my bedroom floor. Eye twitching, I strain, and fight, and lose.

Stupid pushups.

Stupid shoulders.

Why couldn’t they have emerged from the womb fully bulked like Jovey’s?

Even his baby pictures are jacked. While mine are…perfectly acceptable. Adorable, even. Not exactlymale lead material, to be sure. But, well, no baby is meant to be male lead material. Unless you’re my big brother, clearly. He popped right out a Fabio, ready to pose for historical romance cover art.

This is an injustice. A genetic malfunction. An affront against me, personally.

Why couldn’t Ceres be a leg girl? Ineverskip leg day. I bike everywhere and am fully confident in my thighs. These noodle arms, however? They do naught but rest against my desk as I edit and maintain the Rouge Empire’s online presence via marketing. The most vigorous exercise they see is on the days when my delusion suggests I should hand-whip the buttercream frosting for my carrot cakes.

And, even then, I squarely give up roughly two minutes in,wonder what in the world I was thinking, and bring out Old Reliable—my electric hand mixer.

Flopped on the wood floor as I presently am, I understand why Ceres—and book girlies everywhere—wants a guy with shoulders. This…this is pathetic. I cannot princess carry a tall queen like Ceres with these puny limbs.

Puffing hair from my face, I pull myself to my feet, melt into my desk chair, and bring up what I hope will lift my spirits.

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