Chapter 11
Brielle
This whole girlfriend thing was super awkward.
I’d wanted to sound more personal when cheering for my boyfriend, but instead, I sounded like a moron.
At least Claire didn’t mock me, but I did find myself sitting back down on the bleachers and staying there even when Brooks hit the ball.
He made it to second base, and Claire’s boyfriend Jake made it to third, because, frankly, the guys playing infield sucked.
I knew at least two of them were tryout hopefuls.
They needed to stop hoping. The one kid could hardly run, and I recognized him from Spanish II.
He was a brain, not an athlete. But props to him for at least coming out tonight.
Maybe he’d realize trying out for the baseball team this late in his school career was as bad as Babe Ruth becoming an accountant.
I reminded myself that this game was just for fun. Practice, really. Everything was a bit turned around tonight, but I was irritated that Brooks and Reece’s team was down by one. When I saw who was next up to bat, I leaned over to Claire.
“Game over. He’ll strike out.”
Claire shrugged. “Maybe.” She sounded hopeful. “Tyler isn’t that bad.”
“But he’s been swinging weak tonight,” I observed. “I bet he’s hardly practiced all winter.” I was right.
Three pitches.
Three strikes.
Game over.
It stung even though it didn’t mean anything in the scheme of the baseball season. I just didn’t like to see Reece’s teams ever lose, and now, with Brooks, I was more invested than I’d expected.
After the guys finished high-fiving each other and messing around with their equipment, they started trickling off the field and through the gate in the chain link fence.
I abandoned the bleachers to meet up with Brooks. Hunter brushed past me, and Claire laughed her flirty little giggle, which she always reserved for him.
“Hey, Bri!” Hunter called to me.
I turned, wrapping my arms around myself. I should’ve worn a sweatshirt. It was spring-ish out, but not short-sleeve weather. I rubbed the skin on my arms with my hands as Hunter teased, “I hope you believe in me, too.”
“Hunter!” Claire thwacked his arm.
He laughed good-naturedly, and I joined him, even though I sort of wanted to crawl under the bleachers and hide. I was never going to live that down.
With Hunter and Claire headed off toward Hunter’s car—we were all going to meet up at Claire’s house for pizza and a movie—I looked up just in time to see Brooks coming up beside me.
Something tickled in my stomach. His hair was damp from sweat, and his blue eyes were twinkling as if someone had just gifted him a million dollars. “That was awesome!” He breathed.
I eyed him.
“I know. We lost.” His grin was infectious, and I found myself matching it. “But playing? Man. I can’t wait for the season to start.”
The breeze picked up, and a gust swept over my arms. I shivered, rubbing at the bumps that rose on my skin.
“Are you cold?” Brooks dropped his gear bag and bent over it.
Rummaging around, he tugged out his sweatshirt.
It was navy blue with the name of his old high school on the front.
Before I could say, “no” or “thank you” or “yes, please,” he had scrunched it up in his hands and tugged the hoodie down over my head.
My baseball cap got stuck at the neck opening, and then it flipped off my head and onto the ground as he tugged.
The sweatshirt settled on my shoulders, and he finally let go of it. “Put your arms in. You’ll get warm.”
It was so off-handed, so nonchalant, like it wasn’t anything any normal, decent human being wouldn’t have also done.
But as Brooks bent to retrieve my cap that lay on the ground, I slid my arms into the sleeves and inhaled the smell of laundry detergent and .
. . Brooks Mason. It smelled like what I imagined palm trees and ocean spray might smell like. To die for.
He straightened and positioned the ball cap back on my head. Yep. I was drowning. His blue eyes were like the ocean in Hawaii, and he looked at me in this moment as though I were his muse. His reason for playing baseball. His—
Oh my. Brooks’s hands were doing the swift up-and-down rub on my upper arms. Didn’t he know that the idea of another human being touching me was like rubbing a cat’s fur backward?
Only this wasn’t. This was . . . nice. I could feel the warmth coming back into my arms. His sweatshirt fit perfectly.
That cozy, snug sort of perfect. His motion was super polite and super nice and super—oh, hello!
—Brooks pulled me in for a quick hug, and I swear I felt him drop a kiss on my head.
Say what?
He pulled back and, without pausing, reached down for his bag. “Ready to head out?”
I stuttered and stammered, and any noise that may have escaped from my mouth was completely unintelligible. He draped his arm over my shoulder, and we started walking toward his car.
Boyfriend.
Girlfriend.
It felt . . . real. Not fake. This felt real.
Until he leaned over to my ear as we walked and mumbled, “Think they all believe we’re dating?”
Reality hit me like a baseball to the face.
“Oh. Yeah.” I needed to learn to say more than one-word sentences in Brooks’s presence.
“Perfect.” He nodded. Then he added with a smirk, “Still believe in me?”
I didn’t answer. I couldn’t. Because yes, I still believed in him. So much so that the whole sweatshirt scene had me thinking this was real. That we were really dating.
Only we weren’t.
I didn’t even know how I felt about that.
Forty-nine text messages.
That’s how many notifications were on my phone just in the messaging app when I woke up. It was Saturday after the baseball game. Reece and I had come home late—I was still wearing Brooks’s sweatshirt—and I didn’t wake up until noon.
I rolled over in bed, taking my phone with me.
It had to be Lia, and something had to be dreadfully wrong.
Who else would send me that many texts? Only when I opened my messages, they were literally a long line of unique texts from random people at school and a few from Aunt Elle, one from Aunt Tracy, and the Aunt Twins had even sent a few.
Of course, my cousins left me voice messages—it was too early in the day to listen to Jake’s comedic take on life and whatever Jadon said had to be . . .
Wait.
I sat bolt upright in bed and thumbed to my home screen. My app had notifications too. I opened it quickly and checked.
Over 250,000?
I didn’t even bother to look at why. I instantly called Lia, who picked up at the first ring. Her face filled my screen. Wide eyes. Horror. Her mouth gaped open, and she kept making squeaking gasps that sounded like she was dying and resuscitating herself simultaneously.
“Whaaaat?” she repeated over and over.
“What?” I was still bewildered. “I have a gajillion texts, and what is happening on my socials? What went viral?”
“You!” Lia gasped. “You went viral! Even my brother saw it this morning, and we’re in Canada! You’ve gone international!”
“What?” Apparently, that was about all either of us could say in between fragmented sentences.
Lia’s phone shook as she sat down on her bed and then fell back on her pillows. She held the screen over her face, her Blond hair splayed out all over the pillow. “You and Brooks—you’re social media famous.”
I laughed nervously because none of it made sense. “What?” I said again, heartily sick of the word.
Lia sat up, and her video jittered until she finally held still. “Someone posted a video of Brooks putting a sweatshirt on you at a baseball game.”
I didn’t even respond because—well—yes. I responded. “So? Who cares?”
Lia’s eyes widened. “The caption says, ‘AI boyfriend comes to life’!”
“What!” I shrieked. I swung my legs out of bed like I was going to take off running, but I didn’t. I just sat there.
“Yeah.” Lia nodded so vehemently her phone shook again. “It literally outs your whole AI fake boyfriend scheme and calls it an ‘AI love story come true’!”
“But how?” I didn’t know if I should pass out, scream, or throw up. “The only people who knew I even created a fake AI boyfriend were you and Reece.”
“Someone else must’ve found out. You’re a freaking love story gone viral. The video—so cute, by the way—it’s like every girl’s fairy tale romance. A make-believe boyfriend suddenly comes to life? Yeah. TikTok loves it.”
“But he didn’t come to life. It’s not like I made an AI creation and somehow breathed oxygen into him!”
“It doesn’t matter. Watch the video. It swoops in a picture of your AI boyfriend, with all the details of that epic charade, and then bam!
In comes the video of Brooks cuddling you up in his sweatshirt, all dressed in baseball gear and looking like he stepped out of a romance novel. Read the comments!”
So I did. I flicked over to TikTok and saw the video. What’s worse, I saw some of the comments.
“This is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen!”
“I can’t! The way he looks at her makes me melt!”
“I suddenly love baseball!”
“Her AI boyfriend became REAL? I’m so not okay!”
I sagged back onto my bed, staring into my phone and praying that God would somehow erase the last few weeks of my life and give me a do-over.
But that’s not how the Lord worked. I knew this.
And if it was how He worked, I highly doubted He’d be offering me the do-over instead of some international crisis or something.
I sucked in a breath under the assumption that more air would calm me down. It didn’t. “What do I do now?”
Lia gave a nervous laugh. “Ummm…well, you can’t break up with Brooks. That’s a hard no. The world of social media would hate you for it. You’re like the—the poster couple of epic real-life fairy tales come true.”
“But none of it is true. And I still want to know who found out about my AI boyfriend and then leaked it to the press!”
“Hardly the press, Brielle.”
“No. Worse. Social media.”
Knocking on my bedroom door interrupted my growing hysterics. I dropped my phone on my bed, not bothering to end my call with Lia.
When I opened my door, Reece stood opposite it, his hair standing on end, dressed in his customary basketball shorts and t-shirt. But this time, he was wagging his phone back and forth in my face and looked genuinely concerned.
“Have you seen this?”
“Of course I have.” I stepped aside and he came into my room, closing the door behind him.
“Dad is going to kill you.”
“I didn’t post it,” I retorted.
“Maybe not, but your whole AI scheme has been outed. Like, Dad just barely likes Brooks as it is, and when he sees this, he’s going to lose all trust in your integrity.”
“My integrity,” I repeated and rolled my eyes.
I moved past Reece and flopped onto my bed.
“It wasn’t meant to be a big deal. You’ve heard Aunt Tracy—Aunt Elle—they drive me nuts with the whole ‘you need a boyfriend’ thing.
As if books and baseball aren’t enough? And then Jenessa—and even Claire—it’s like you have no identity in high school unless you’re dating someone or in some sort of dysfunctional relationship.
The fake Brooks was meant to be a diversion tactic.
Not viral news for people in Russia!” I squealed the last part because I was scrolling comments again and saw someone post something from Moscow.
Lia’s camera was shrunk to the bottom corner of my phone, and I saw her eyes widen.
Reece collapsed onto a papasan chair in the opposite corner of my room, his hairy teenage legs draped over the side. “Like I said—Dad is going to kill you.”
“Did you tell someone?” I demanded answers. “About my AI boyfriend?”
“No.” He crumpled his face in offense.
“Did you tell anyone Brooks and I aren’t actually dating for real?”
“Of course not.” Reece picked at a loose thread on his t-shirt. “He’s a good catcher. I want him on my team. I don’t want to smear his reputation and make people not trust him.”
Ouch.
That hurt.
I’d made myself into a sort of liar, and unintentionally recruited Brooks into it also. Now we both ran the risk of losing our integrity if our fake dating scheme was outed, and I could only be thankful people thought my whole AI thing was romantic.
“How did this happen?” I moaned, falling back onto my pillows.
“You’re at 221,000 shares now,” Lia informed me.
Reece sat up straight in the chair, his eyes brightening. “Is that Lia?”
“Hi, Reece!” Lia called.
Reece launched himself across the room and snatched my phone from my hand. “How’s Canada?”
“It’s still the greatest country on earth,” Lia quipped.
“Nice try,” Reece retorted.
“Oh my gosh!” I interrupted, hearing myself and wishing I didn’t sound so whiny. “My life is exploding, and you’re playing country wars?”
“We’re not at war,” Reece corrected. “We’re in competition. There’s a massive difference.”
“Besides, Reece knows he’ll lose,” Lia laughed.
“We didn’t lose in 1776,” Reece retorted.
“Learn your history, Reece,” she tossed back. “Your revolution didn’t end in 1776; that’s when you all declared yourselves on paper.”
“Whatever.” Reece didn’t seem bothered by being corrected. He just grinned.
“Guys!” I interrupted. I grabbed my phone back from Reece.
“What do I do?” I didn’t like that my eyes burned from trying not to cry out of sheer panic.
Dad would be angry. School would be a pit of gossip on Monday.
And there was no way now that Brooks and I could walk out of this unscathed, so we had to keep up the facade.
At least he’d get his extra credit on that project.
Boy, would he ever. The whole project for Mrs. Templeton would be the most insane look into a viral relationship ever created for Lit.
“What do I do?” I bit the inside of my lip.
I looked at my phone and Lia’s wide-eyed, empathetic wince.
I shifted my attention to Reece, who was biting his pinky fingernail and then flicking it on my floor.
I needed to talk to Brooks.
Stat.
Damage control.
Before Dad decided to get on social media and watch reels.
I’d be grounded for life.