Page 41 of Red Flag, Green Light

Rouge: hurts to hear that you have no faith in my ability to market a short king

I sigh, audibly, and slump against my desk. Rouge, why? I was counting on you.

Rouge: 6’1” isn’t even short

Rouge: and i bet he’s working very, very hard on his shoulders

Sara: Are you drunk?

Rouge: do you know what mixes well with chocolate milk?

Rouge: 9according to the internet, which i trust with my life)

My brows rise, and I stare at the9typo while I tap my response.

Sara: Carrot cake?

Rouge: vodka

Ah. Well. Not my first choice.

Sara: Surely you aren’t sipping a chocolate milk cocktail right now.

Rouge: chug is a more accurate verb

Sara: Right… Everything okay, friend?

Maybe the partner I assume she wanted to write an off-market book for didn’t like being told he wasn’t marketable. Some people get upset over nonsense and make it everyone’s problem. I’ve seen relationships like that before. I spent my childhood mediating a relationship like that, and I’ve spent some of my adulthood editing books where I’ve had to fix relationships that felt like that.

Some authors really don’t quite get the balance between toxicity that is acceptable in-genre and just plain ew.

Rouge: okay?

Rouge: am i ok?

Rouge: totally

Sara: Convincing.

Sara: Are you safe?

Rouge: physically or emotionally?

Sara: Both, friend…

Rouge: what are you supposed to do when the person you love with your entire heart likes the most important person in the world to you? and to make matters worse, the person who’s most important to you is deeply in love with someone else even though they don’t even know it. so, basically, no one is happy, and there’s nothing you can do to fix anything. what do you do then?

I read the question five times, yet I still don’t understand. What does shemean“what do you do”? What she’s supposed to do is obvious.

Sara: Write a book about it.

Rouge: wrong genre

Sara: Start a new pen name.

Rouge: you don’t edit other genres

Because other genres are boring. Guy likes girl. Girl is too stupid to notice. Something happens. They get together.Something happens. They break up. He creates a grand-gesture expectation instead of a simple-but-consistent one. You know, liketalking about the problem before resorting to breakup.

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