Chapter 12
Brooks
Yeah. I saw it the moment I sat down for breakfast, and my Mom had a note stuck to my cereal bowl that said, “Check your socials”.
Mom was a social media manager for her job, so she lived and breathed every platform out there.
Of course she’d see that her son and his “girlfriend” had gone viral.
Only, I hadn’t told her that I had a girlfriend yet.
I hadn’t told my dad either, but my parents weren’t exactly on the best of terms lately—especially after the move—so I hadn’t wanted to make things worse.
A year ago they’d been talking about getting a divorce. So far, they were still together.
Looking at my phone, I realized I probably hadn’t done that great of a job of reducing drama in our house.
“So you have a girlfriend already, huh?” Mom walked into the kitchen with her coffee cup and went to refill it at the pot.
“Yeah.” No way was I going to explain all the details to her.
“And is this AI story true?” Mom poured the coffee into her mug.
“Yeah, I guess.” I focused on choosing cereal and hoped Mom wouldn’t ask too many questions.
“So your new girlfriend made up an AI boyfriend for fun, and he happened to be just like you.”
“Name and all.” I poured Fruit Loops into my bowl. Usually, I tried to eat healthier to stay fit for baseball, but today was a Fruit Loops day.
“That’s crazy,” Mom put the coffee pot back on its burner. She took a sip. “Do I get to meet this girl, now that she’s made you a social media sensation?”
I glanced at my parents. Mom was cool. She didn’t overreact to this sort of stuff, and maybe she should. I dunno. She tended to overreact about other things, like moving to Wisconsin when she didn’t want to. I was on her side on that one. Maybe now more than ever.
“Sure. I can bring Brielle over.”
“Good.” Mom leaned against the counter. “I wonder if we could get sponsors . . .” She let her words hang, and I could see her marketing wheel turning.
“Mom,” I said. “We’re not going to monetize our relationship on social media.” Not to mention, I had a pretty strong feeling that Brielle’s dad was not going to react with the same type of calm as Mom.
“This whole girl and going viral thing better not make your grades worse.” She leveled her “mom look” on me, which had never really worked. Mom couldn’t look stern if she tried.
“It won’t.” I didn’t mention the extra credit project, but now, well—for sure we’d complete it because if we broke up now, it would affect the entire world. This was going to have to blow over.
The doorbell dinged, and I looked up from cereal. “Who’s here this early?” I muttered.
Mom gave me an exasperated look. “It’s one in the afternoon, lazy butt.” She messed up my hair as she passed my chair.
I heard Mom answer the front door.
There were murmurs.
One sounded a bit panicked.
I turned in my chair just in time to see Brielle hurry into the room, following Mom.
That Brielle was trying to maintain a happy, non-affected demeanor was obvious, and even though I had only known her for a few days, I could see immediately that Brielle was anything but calm.
I think she might have even been crying.
Her eyes looked a little red-rimmed. But she also looked mad.
Great.
Sad. Mad.
That was a nasty combination in a girl.
And I knew why she was mad. We’d gone viral. Someone had leaked her AI boyfriend scheme, taken that video, and then sensationalized it on social media.
Brielle would want to know who had leaked it.
And I knew who it was.
It was me.
Brielle stared at me with wide green eyes that blinked furiously. She was trying not to cry, and I felt like a complete jerk. Well, more of an idiot.
“You told?” She gaped at me as we sat on the beat-up couch in our basement, away from my mom.
Dad had gone out to play an early game of golf on this unseasonably warm February day.
I had no siblings, so we were alone—on a couch—in a basement.
I was pretty sure Brielle’s dad wouldn’t approve, but I could guarantee him that nothing was going to happen except maybe my murder.
“I didn’t tell anyone we weren’t really dating.” I tried to fix it. I think I made it worse.
Brielle reared back against the couch cushions. “Oh! So, you kept quiet about what would make you look like a moron, but you spilled my business?”
“I just mentioned it to Jenessa.”
“Jenessa!” Brielle’s voice was shrill enough to break glass. “You do know she is the school’s biggest gossip? She thrives on this sort of thing. Why on earth would you tell Jenessa?”
As if I had even thought it through. I hadn’t.
In fact, I thought Brielle and Jenessa were friends, so didn’t that mean that Jenessa would know about the AI thing that started all this?
I thought back to my first day in school, and that was the problem—it was really the first time I thought it through.
Jenessa thinking I was from North Carolina .
. . and . . . yeah. Okay. So there had been enough clues that she didn’t know that Brielle had faked her boyfriend before I showed up, and that Brielle didn’t actually even know I existed.
I’d just assumed and, well, here we were.
“Jenessa is one of the reasons I made you up!” Brielle swiped at her eyes, fury and hurt welling in them. “She was always on me about guys, and I just wanted it to stop. Now you told her? That you were an accidental look-alike to my AI boyfriend?”
I winced. This was one big reason I hadn’t bothered with a girlfriend in the first place. The drama was obnoxious. But now what? Break up and risk the extra credit project? Break up and make both of us out to be complete liars? There wasn’t a clean break anymore. We’d waited too long.
“Jenessa?” Brielle threw her head back. Then she snapped it forward. “How’d she get that video? She wasn’t at last night’s game.”
I shrugged. That I didn’t know.
Awareness flooded Brielle’s face. “Claire. I bet you anything Claire took it, trying to be cute, sent it to Jenessa, and knowing my little AI fun, Jenessa did her reel, and here we are.”
“I don’t get why it’s such a big deal on social media.” I stated how I really felt, and Brielle blinked at me like I was stupid.
“Have you never read a romance novel?” she asked.
“Do I look like I have?” I shot back.
Brielle crossed her arms and eyed me dubiously. “Bruh, I’m at least well-rounded in my experiences. I read romance novels, and I understand baseball. You just know one thing. Baseball.”
“And that’s bad?” Maybe I was stupid.
Brielle smiled a little. A very little. More like a smile of disbelief than one that implied she was lightening up. “Romance novels never happen. Not in real life.”
“Ooooh-kay,” I answered.
Brielle adjusted her seat on the couch, and it bounced because the springs in it were old.
“Romance novels are like . . .” she scrunched her face and looked at the ceiling as she tried to figure out what to say.
“Romance novels are stories that girls want to believe could happen, but are so ridiculous and unreal, they never would.”
“What does that have to do with us going viral?”
She rolled her eyes. “Because. Let me put it simply,” she smiled again, only this time like I was a toddler and she was teaching me how to think.
“Girl creates an imaginary boyfriend, complete with pictures of someone really, really good-looking. Then, a guy shows up at school who is exactly like the imaginary boyfriend, and then they start dating. It’s like a fairy tale come true.
And that video from last night? It makes you look like—like Flynn Ryder from Tangled.
Cute, considerate, playful, and all mine. ”
“I’m not all yours,” I said quickly.
“I know. Hence our problem.” Brielle mashed her lips together and glared at me. “Everyone thinks we are a walking romance novel come to life. There’s no way out of this now, unless we break thousands of hearts around the world, pretend to hate each other, and never speak to each other again.”
Silence.
I had no clue what to say, so I said the first thing that came to mind. “Is that all?”
“Is that all?” Brielle’s mouth dropped open, and if it was possible, I thought her green eyes got greener.
“Is that all? That’s not enough consequence for you?
Even if we decided to mutually break up now, people will post about it, and we’ll still be under the relationship microscope, only worse.
Now they’ll analyze why we broke up. They’ll analyze what ruined their romance novel. ”
Brielle leaned forward, grabbed my hands, and gave them a little shake. “Brooks! You have no idea how rabid high school girls are about these types of stories! This isn’t going to just go away!”
“This is why romance novels are dumb,” I muttered.
“Excuse me?” Brielle pulled back and dropped my hands.
“They give girls unrealistic ideas and guys suffer for it.”
“Ok. You can’t say that until you’ve read one,” Brielle crossed her arms.
“But am I wrong?” I pressed.
“Well—not entirely, but—”
“So I’m not wrong?”
“Romance novels are really good! And there’s nothing wrong with a girl wanting a real-life romance!”
“Soooo,” I was trying too hard to understand. “You actually did want a boyfriend?”
“No!” Brielle flung herself backward in exasperation. “You’re never going to get it. Okay.” She sat back up. “I’m going to get you a romance novel. You’ll read it and then tell me it’s a waste of time.”
“I never said it was a waste of time, I just said it created expectations for girls that have now become our problem.”
“Will you read one?” Dang it if Brielle didn’t have a pouty look on her face that was stupid cute.
Why? None of this conversation made any sense.
It was exactly what I’d always thought about girls.
They don’t make sense. They get mad at the same time they defend what they’re mad about.
What are guys supposed to do? Just sit back and ride it out?
But then . . . the extra credit. I needed the extra credit project. I needed grades that would keep me qualified for the baseball team.
“You want me to read a romance novel?” I verified.
Brielle smiled then and nodded. Almost happily. I wasn’t sure why. Nothing had been resolved, and I felt like we were way off topic now.
“Fine.” I threw my hands up and then let them fall back to my lap. “I’ll read a romance novel.”
I’d just wanted to help a girl out. That was all this had been at the beginning.
Then, it was the extra credit. Now? It was like the time my cat had tangled itself up in a whole bunch of string I’d left out after building a kite.
We couldn’t find the beginning of the string from the end, and everything in between might have made sense at one point, but now it didn’t.
Now, we just had a tangled mess.
Somehow, we had to work with it because it wasn’t going away.
Apparently—at least according to Brielle—I had to read a romance novel to understand it all.
I was more confused than ever.