Page 87 of Red Flag, Green Light

“That’s plenty of time. Don’t worry. It doesn’t need to be notarized since you’re childhood friends, not enemies.”Hahaha.Lucky you! “I know how to whip up a solid fake dating contract, easy peasy.” Unfortunately, I donotknow how to write the next chapter of my “book” for Ceres without her peer pressuring me into adding a crime. But that’s a problem for future Mars. Current Mars just needs his laptop. So I get it, and then I open it, and then I typeLyra and Jove’s Ultimate Dating Research Contractwritten by Jove and Mars Rogue.

“Capitalize ‘written,’” Jove says. “It’s on a new line and looks stupid lowercase.”

“Oi, who’s the editor here?”

He pouts.

Sighing, I capitalize it, then I page break and typeRules and Expectations. “Rule one,” I chuckle as I narrate. “No falling in love.”

My dear, dear,dearbrother says, “That doesn’t need to be a rule.”

“Whatever do you mean, babe?”

“She can fall in love with me if she wants. She could do worse.”

I laugh, outright. “If you’re gonna do the trope, you gotta do it right. Rule one isalwaysabout falling in love, and how it’s not allowed, and rule one is alsoalwaysbroken.”

Jove blinks, then shrugs. “If you say so.”

I do say so. In fact, I insist. I insist all the way through ten pages of a fake dating contract, because if you’re going to be insane, you better do it right. After the process is complete andour meeting is at an end, I find myself thrust, unceremoniously, into Future Mars’s skin, discovering with horror that he is actually now Current Mars.

And Current Mars still has no idea what to write next in his diary.

Rouge: What if my MMC shows up with a ten-page fake dating contract?

Sara: What is this? A romcom?

It could be, Sara.It could be.

Rouge: No…

Rouge: But it is a slow burn; therefore, I kindly ask that you calm down with your comments.

Sara: My comments are perfectly chill.

Rouge: Insisting that he either choke her or give her a locking choker is not entirely cool and calm of you, actually.

Sara: I’m obsessed with his slow descent into madness, but I need that madness to affect her sooner rather than later. What about a touch-her-and-die situation? Could he save her from something and snap at having experienced nearly losing her? If you refuse to let him kidnap her (yet??), maybe someone else could try to, thus shoving him oh-so-tenderly off the cliff of his breaking point.

Rouge: You scare me.

Sara: ^^

Hopeless to please, I open my document and start throwing down words, coming out the other end with something resembling what she’s asked for. Plus extra pining. And suffering. And a substantial breakdown.

Which is not at all reflective of my present reality.

Benevolent as always, she lets me live another day—in exchange for a dozen or more comments that will replay in theback of my mind the next time we meet.

Lucky me.

All things considered, the book seems to be coming along. Which means I’m going to have an extra book soon. It’s slower, and less violent, than most Rouge novels, which means that—in accordance with the package I ordered from Whirlwind Branding years ago—I should not publish it under the Rouge pen name.

But I’m also not going to start a new one.

Yet it feels wrong to have Ceres work on something that won’t become anything more than a collection of digital breakdowns.

Right around that thought, it hits me: Jove is working on aFlag Day dark romance.

---