Chapter 1
Brielle
“Soooooo?”
My aunt Tracy’s eyebrows bobbed up and down, and she planted her chin in her hand, her elbow resting on the countertop of the kitchen’s island.
She was perched on a stool, and even though she was in her early forties, I think Aunt Tracy had the maturity level of a twelve-year-old girl, at least when it comes to boys.
This is why I created Brooks. My AI-manufactured, Pinterest-inspired, fake boyfriend.
It’s genius, really. Because now I can satisfy Aunt Tracy’s need to talk boys—and hopefully get it over with soon, because I have a book in my bag waiting for me.
It’s a special edition, and my best friend, Lia, convinced me to read it.
Well, convinced is a stretch. She bought the book for me and had it shipped from her home country.
O, Canada! Cue the Canadian national anthem.
Gosh, I love Lia because she even ordered the UK version of the book, which has embossed lettering and sprayed edges.
“Sooooo?”
Oh yeah. Back to Aunt Tracy.
I mustered the same excitement I usually have for books. “Want to see a pic?” I waved my phone in the air like a tempting piece of gossip.
“Yes!” Aunt Tracy bounced on her chair.
“Wait what?” My other aunt, Elle, poked her head around the corner, her red hair brighter than the card aisle for the over-emphasized holiday some celebrate, called Valentine’s Day. “Is this the boyfriend pics?” Elle hurried to Tracy’s side.
“The boyfriend?” Another shriek, and my third and fourth aunts—who were twins and in their thirties—leapt from the couch in the open concept living room and charged me.
“Okay, okay, okay!” I held my phone over my head. Aunts are like rabid raccoons around a garbage can. Or maybe more like chickens when you throw grain into their coop. It’s madness. Whatever it is, it’s madness.
“What’s his name?” Elle insisted.
“Brooks,” I answered because I had to, and this time, thankfully, I was prepared. I guess most girls at sixteen have a boyfriend. My aunts had been telling me for months now that book boyfriends don’t count. “His name is Brooks.”
I found the folder I created in my photos just for this moment, breathed a prayer that this didn’t qualify as lying, and flipped my phone around to show the aunts my “boyfriend.”
“Oh my gosh!” Aunt Tracy clapped her hand over her mouth.
“He’s cute!” the twins cried.
Elle’s smile was delighted. “I mean,” she waved her hand in the air, “I don’t mean to be weird, but if I were in high school, I’d want to date him.”
“That’s weird,” I confirmed.
“Fine.” Elle shrugged. “Does he play baseball like Reece?”
I nodded. Thanks to my older brother, I knew a lot about one thing regarding life outside of books. “He’s a catcher.”
“A catcher!” Aunt Tracy had a way of exclaiming things in such a shrill tone that it made me want to go far, far away.
“Yep,” I nodded. I didn’t have much else to say.
I didn’t usually go on about boys, so aside from the fact that my AI-generated photos had passed the test and my aunts believed me, the only thing left was to establish that Brooks lived far enough away that they would never meet him. “He lives in North Carolina.”
“Where in North Carolina?” Twin #1 demanded.
“Umm—Asheville.” I hoped Asheville was in North Carolina.
“You met on vacation?” Twin #2 confirmed.
“Mm-hmm,” I answered. I’d learned enough from watching crime shows that the least amount of details was best when trying to keep a fake story straight.
“Where on vacation?” Aunt Tracy seemed more than just slightly unconvinced. Did she know I was making this up?
“At family camp,” I supplied.
“When you were in Texas?” She was trying to connect the dots.
“Yeah,” I nodded. “People from North Carolina go to family camp in Texas just like people from Wisconsin do.”
“Oh.” Tracy shrugged. Apparently, I’d convinced her.
“And he asked you out?” Elle’s smile almost stretched off her face.
She was so pleased. It was like I’d won a million dollars or something.
For a second, I felt bad. It was lying. It really was.
I think. And lying was a whole Ten Commandments thing that was a big no, but…
a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do.
And if my aunts were this annoying, then my friends were even more so.
Necessity required that I practice AI-deception. I created a boyfriend. He was fake. I’d fake date him through my sophomore year, and then, hopefully, everyone here would leave me alone, and I could go back to talking to Lia.
Who was in my jeans’ back pocket.
I call her my Pocket Bestie. We’re always on video chat. Always. How else am I supposed to get through life? Coffee is not always enough, you know.
“Mmmmpfffpffff!” I could hear Lia’s muffled voice in my pocket right now.
I mentally begged her to stay quiet. I’d fill her in on the aunts in a few minutes, but the chaos of their constant chattering and ecstatic glee was making my anxiety increase. And I wasn’t about to see a therapist for it. I could imagine how that conversation would go.
Therapist: So, you have anxiety?
Me: Yes.
Therapist: Tell me about what’s causing it.
Me: Four aunts, a fake boyfriend, and the fact my BFF lives in another country.
Therapist: I have a pill for that.
Me: No thanks.
“So?” Twin #2 was staring me down as though I had tracked with the conversation completely and hadn’t just gone off into la-la land like I tend to do when I want to get away from the chaos.
I raised my eyebrows.
“Sooooo?” Twin #1 leaned forward.
I raised my eyebrows even further and blinked. Doomed. I was doomed.
“When do we get to meet Brooks?” Elle asked.
Oh.
That.
Yeah.
Easy answer.
“You won’t.”
“What?” Aunt Tracy’s hand slapped her chest in exaggerated shock.
“He lives in North Carolina,” I restated.
Hence why I’d chosen that state. It wasn’t within easy driving distance, there were no direct flights to my local airport from anywhere in North Carolina, and .
. . well, it was a warm state. I liked warm.
I liked beaches. North Carolina seemed like it checked all the boxes.
Elle collapsed onto a stool. “That’s unacceptable.” She whipped out her phone, thumbing its screen. “I have frequent flyer points. I’ll book him a ticket.”
Of course she would.
“He—can’t come right now.”
“Whatever,” Elle waved me off. “No one turns down a free flight.”
“Brooks will.” I snapped. I was going to pass out. I needed an iced caramel latte stat to help me calm down. (Yes, I know there’s caffeine in a latte. Let me be who I am.)
Aunt Tracy tsk-tsked her tongue. “Elle, let’s not get ahead of Brielle.”
“But my namesake needs her boyfriend!” Elle wailed, and I wondered why my mom had named me after the most melodramatic of all the aunts.
“Your namesake will be fine,” I reassured her.
“Mmmppfffppff.” Lia was making my back pocket make noises again.
I put my hand on my stomach and faked a wince. “I’m not feeling so good.” That wasn’t a lie. It was the truth. This entire scenario made me sick to my stomach.
“I thought I heard your tummy moaning,” Aunt Tracy rested a hand on my arm.
Concern was in her eyes. No, no, no. I didn’t need an antacid.
I needed to get to my phone, to Lia, to get Lia to be quiet when she was on video chat and eavesdropping from my pocket—or at least mute her—and to get away from my nosy aunts.
Or noisy aunts.
Take your pick.
Regardless, Brooks was a hit. Now, to keep Aunt Elle from buying my nonexistent boyfriend a plane ticket.
"Oh my gosh, I’m dying!” I sat in the bathtub with the bathroom door locked and stared down at my phone. I saw half of Lia’s face, and the rest of the screen was a fantastic view of her bedroom ceiling.
“What happened?” Lia asked. “I could only hear bits and pieces. Your aunts sounded crazy excited!”
“They were!” I shot a glance at the bathroom door.
Sunday family dinners were nice on one hand, because I got to spend time with the extended family weekly.
On the other hand, it created these types of situations.
The kind where I hid in Aunt Elle’s bathtub and hoped my cousins, Jake and Jadon, didn’t go all FBI on the door and break it down.
I could see seventeen-year-old Jake now, lazily leaning on the doorframe with the door in pieces on the floor.
He’d stare at me and shake his head, arms crossed, while Jadon—who was my age and had just gotten his driver’s license—would voice what both guys were thinking.
“Really, Bri? A fake boyfriend?”
Yeah. Jake and Jadon would see right through my little charade.
“Brielle?” Lia called.
“Oh, sorry.” I averted my eyes from the bathroom door. It was still intact. There was no sign or sound of the cousins judging me.
“So?” Lia tried again.
“So, my Aunt Elle wants to buy Brooks a plane ticket to come visit.”
“Shut up.”
“Yep.” I pressed my lips together in exasperation. “See what I mean? My aunts are like fictional fairy godmothers—only the super intrusive kind.”
“Just ignore them.” Lia offered her always-helpful advice. “My mom’s cousin is like that and after a few hours she loses interest. You can typically divert old people like them if you bring up vitamins, gossip from church, or news of someone having a baby.”
“I don’t know any gossip from church,” I countered. The truth was, I didn’t think we were supposed to gossip. That wasn’t a Ten Commandment too, was it?
“Vitamins, then. Mention zinc or vitamin D, and they’ll go off on it.”
“My aunts are way past those basic vitamins,” I frowned.
“Fine. Pick…” Lia thought for a second. “Pick something more controversial, like folic acid.”
“Folic acid is controversial?” I crinkled my face in confusion.
“Fine.” Lia jostled her phone as she repositioned it to lean against something, and I was able to see more of her face. “Then go the baby route.”
“No one has had a baby,” I countered.
“No one?” Lia’s voice went up an octave in surprise.
“Nope.”
“Literally no one?”
“No. Well,” I hesitated, “I guess my old Sunday school teacher’s daughter did. But she lives in Ohio or something.”
“Perfect. Drop that nugget of info and watch the aunts switch directions.”
“I’m fine if they want to go on about Brooks—that’s why I created him. I just don’t want Elle to buy a plane ticket.”
“She won’t,” Lia assured me. “No adult woman over forty buys a plane ticket for a teenage boy without consulting with his parents. It’d be beyond weird. Not to mention, ew.”
“Good point.” I tried to take comfort in that. But the problem was that Elle didn’t always think through her impulses until later.
“So.” Lia’s tone of voice indicated she was subject shifting on me. “You ready to head back to school tomorrow?”
“The weekends are never long enough,” I complained.
“Nope,” Lia commiserated. “But you dropped all the info about Brooks last week, right?”
“At school? Yeah.” I nodded. One comment to Jenessa Parker that I officially had an out-of-state boyfriend, and the entire church youth group, Reece’s baseball team, and the whole school knew about Brooks Mason.
Brooks Mason was dating Brielle Walters.
Brielle Walters was dating Brooks Mason.
Brielle Walters was dating.
Okay. Let’s be honest. The fact that I was dating wasn’t really the root of the big news. It was the fact that senior Reece Walters’s little sister was dating that was the big news.
Reece’s little sister was a bookworm who liked baseball.
Reece’s little sister was his shadow because she had no life.
Reece’s little sister needed her own life.
Now she had one, and Reece could enjoy the popularity scene without the added baggage of Brielle.
But they didn’t know what I knew.
Aside from the fact that my boyfriend was stupid fake, my older brother Reece actually liked having me around.
We were close. But we were also very different.
And for whatever reason, having me around held Reece back.
I didn’t want to do that to Reece anymore.
It was his last year of high school. He was the star of the baseball team.
He was—well, he was my brother. I looked out for him; I didn’t hold him back.
So, if having a bookish younger sister as a sidekick was an annoyance, I figured Brooks Mason, AI-generated boyfriend, would help with that situation, too.
Four nosy aunts sort of off my back? Check.
Older brother no longer carrying the hassle of a single, lonely little sister with him wherever he went? Check.
Me able to relax without everyone trying to pair me up with a guy? Check.
It was a win-win. For everyone.
Until . . . it wasn’t.