Chapter 13
Brielle
To say Dad was mad was probably an understatement.
But I was surprised that he was less mad at Brooks and me, and more upset with social media and how “the world has gotten completely out of hand.” I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the next year or two, he uprooted us all and made us disappear with him to some remote wilderness where we’d have to survive on fish from a lake and wild carrots or something.
And if I were going to discuss today’s events with anyone, it would only be Lia. So later that night, as I browsed my shelves of romance novels, we discussed the problem that was Brooks Mason.
“You like Brooks, don’t you?” Lia was using her big sister tone of voice.
The kind that made me feel that if I told her anything less than the truth, it would almost physically hurt her.
“It’s why you’re even considering how to manage this whole incident instead of just walking away and being done with it. ”
I ignored her question. “Did you know that a great batting average of .300 means a hitter only successfully hits the ball three times out of ten? If that were an average for a reader, we’d only finish three out of ten books we started.
It’s appalling. I don’t even know how baseball players with that average have jobs in the MLB. ”
“Brielle.” Lia said my name in a way that made it clear she knew I was hedging.
“And yet,” I argued, still avoiding the topic at hand, “a Major League player with that batting average is considered ‘excellent.’ There’s no way I’m cheering for someone who only finishes three books out of ten. The discrepancies in sports are remarkable.”
“Reading isn’t a sport,” Lia said.
“It should be.” I pulled out a bright red-covered book, then pushed it back in.
I didn’t think that I should start Brooks on a romance novel titled Fabulous Fabrications.
The last thing I needed him to read was a romance between two people whose relationship was based on lies.
“If reading were a sport,” I continued, “then I could be in the Olympics based on those averages. I’ve actually finished ten out of ten of the last books I started.
Beat that average, Christian Yelich.” I glanced at my Brewers jersey hanging on my closet door.
I loved Yelich. Don’t get me wrong. But put my reading average against his batting average, and the man’s career would be over.
“Brielle, you’re avoiding the issue.”
“What issue?” I played dumb. I had to, or I’d self-combust.
“Brooks. Your sudden surge to viral popularity. The truth that you’re even tolerating any of this is because you actually are developing a thing for him.”
I ignored my phone, which was lying on my desk. I hoped Lia liked her video view of my ceiling. I pulled another book off my shelf, debating, then rejected it. “I don’t have a thing for Brooks.”
“And you’d be willing to bet your loyalty for the Brewers on that?”
I stopped. Then I stalked over to my desk and looked down at my phone so Lia could see the gravity of my reaction. “A true Brewers fan would never wager anything against them.”
“Fine,” Lia accepted my rebuke. “Then you’d bet your entire book collection that you don’t have even a little something for Brooks Mason?”
I moved away from my phone and back to my bookshelf, running my hand along the spines. “They’re my babies! I couldn’t bet my babies!”
“Brielle!” Lia’s laugh was filled with both humor and exasperation.
“Listen,” I said before she could keep digging at the one topic I really didn’t want to investigate.
Liking Brooks Mason would defeat the entire reason I came up with a boyfriend in the first place.
I wanted to put an end to the whole “Brielle needs a boyfriend” thing.
Now that it had blown up in my face, I especially didn’t want to add feelings to the list of things I had to figure out.
“I need to pick out a book for Brooks to read. He thinks romance novels are a bad influence on us.”
“Well, some of them are. I mean, the spicy ones are unnecessary. I’m not dumb. I know that stuff happens in real life and that a lot of girls like to read it, but not me. I’m still in my Disney Princess phase of life.” Lia released a dreamy sigh.
“Me too. But Brooks says that’s putting unrealistic expectations on guys to live up to the heroes in the books.”
Lia laughed. “Of course it does! Name one real-life guy who is anything at all like the Inheritance Games boys!”
“My point exactly!” I returned to my phone and met Lia’s emphatic expression with my own. “They’re so perfect because they’re fictional. I don’t expect Brooks to be like that.”
Lia smirked. “Brooks? Your boyfriend Brooks?”
“Stooooop!” I wailed. “Ugh. Lia. No. Yes. I mean—I prefer book boyfriends over real ones because I can dream and get all la-la and then go to a baseball game and pretend I fall in love with the catcher. But in the end, my life is controlled and in order and it’s all just fiction.
I don’t expect that in real life—I don’t want that in real life.
So that’s where Brooks’s argument fails. ”
“Does it fail though? I mean,” Lia’s tone of voice begged me to listen. So I did. “if you did have a little bit of a thing for him, would he be annoying you right now because he leaked your AI story to Jenessa? Major mistake there, in my opinion.”
“Well, yes, that was dumb, but he—he apologized,” I argued on his behalf, though I wasn’t quite sure why I did. “And—I’m the one who got myself into the AI mess. He just got sucked into it.”
“So he should be annoyed at you, then, because you’re not the perfect romance novel heroine.”
“There are no perfect romance novel heroines,” I concluded. “They’re all a mess. They need the hero to rescue them.”
We were silent for a long time. I think we’d talked circles and sort of proved Brooks’s point, but I’d never admit it out loud, because I liked romance novels too much.
I yanked a light blue book from my bookshelf. Pride and Prejudice. “Jane Austen. I’m going to have Brooks read Jane Austen. No one can argue anything negative about the queen of romance.”
“And there’s nothing perfect about Mr. Darcy,” Lia concluded.
“Nothing at all,” I said.
Then we both released dreamy sighs—and for some reason, I had the instant picture in my head of Brooks Mason reading my copy of Pride and Prejudice while playing one-handed catch with a baseball, and my stomach did a little flip.
Lia was right. I was developing a thing for Brooks Mason. But I had no intention of telling anyone.
Not even Lia.
“ I’m so excited!” Phoebe Francis of the Driftwood High School paper lined up her colored pens on the table. “I get to interview the most popular high school couple on the planet!”
Brooks and I exchanged looks. We’d arrived at school prepared—or we thought we were prepared. We weren’t. Even Principal Carson met us to congratulate us on our “viral success” and for “putting Driftwood High on the map.”
That had not been our intention.
Now here we were, being interviewed by the school paper. Something every couple who is fake-dating dreams about. Not.
“So. Let’s start at the beginning.” Phoebe picked up a teal-colored pen as if that was her “beginning” color. “Brielle, what inspired you to create a fake boyfriend with AI?”
I opened my mouth to give a very rehearsed answer. I’d thought it up last night with Lia. It was a safe answer and—
“Was it desperation because no one would date you otherwise? Or was it because you thought it’d increase your desirability?”
“Um—”
“Or maybe you just did it for fun? As a test to see who would fall for an AI-generated boyfriend?” Phoebe waved her pen at me.
“Because there is a lot of controversy right now about people finding love with AI personalities. Do you think it’s dangerous to develop a relationship with someone who is actually computer-generated? ”
“Well, yes, I mean, they’re not really real, and I—”
“There have been a few awful stories in the news lately about teenagers just like us, developing romantic relationships with AI and then doing—well, awful things. It’s really sad.
I mean, they’re trusting a computer and allowing it to influence what they say and what they think and, yeah.
So, was that your frame of mind when you first created your AI boyfriend? ”
“No!” I stared at Phoebe. My brain had never even considered any of that—although, I conceded, Phoebe wasn’t wrong.
I opened my mouth to answer.
Tried to remember my rehearsed response.
My brain went completely blank.
I opted for the first thing that popped into my mind. “My aunts were annoying me about not having a boyfriend, so I made one up.”
Phoebe blinked, obviously underwhelmed. “Oh.” She tapped her pen on her pad of paper. “And, did your aunts . . . fall for it?”
I nodded.
Shoot.
Great.
Now I was making my aunts out to be gullible and annoying. That hadn’t been my intention.
“And the AI image you created—” Phoebe pulled out her phone and flashed the photo I’d originally created that looked remarkably like Brooks, who now sat in stony silence next to me.
“—What did you type into AI to come up with this image! I mean, it looks so much like you, Brooks,” she shifted to Brooks, “that I can hardly believe it’s really AI. ”
Brooks looked at me.
Well, he was no help. How could he be?
I squirmed in my chair. “I—just typed in attributes that I liked.”
“That you were attracted to?” Phoebe clarified.
Well, that was an uncomfortable question. I didn’t dare look at Brooks.
“Well—” I felt Brooks shift beside me. Was he enjoying this?
“I just typed in general stuff, like—blond hair, blue eyes, and—cute.” It was a lame answer.
Anyone who knew even basic stuff about AI had to know I’d been way more detailed than that.
But I wasn’t going to gush to the school newspaper that what I’d really typed was:
Create an image of a guy around 18 years old with beachy, surfer blond hair, blue eyes like the ocean, a square jawline, and an athletic build. Give him olive-tone skin, and if he looks baseball player-like, that’d be great.
There’d been more too. I’d had a little too much fun creating my imaginary image and a lot more fun passing it off to the aunts—and of course, Jenessa and Claire. Lia had been rolling with laughter.
None of this was supposed to be like this.
“Tell me..” Phoebe shifted her attention to Brooks—I think I wasn’t giving her what she wanted. “When did you both realize you had feelings for each other?”
Oh crud.
Brooks choked. Then choked again. “Water.”He waved toward a plastic bottle, and Phoebe reached for it, pushing it into his hands. He popped off the cap and took a long drink, his eyes begging me to intervene.
I didn’t have a clue what to say!
Pretend, Brooks. This is all fake. Just go for it.
I could only hope he could read my emotional cheerleading from the expression on my face.
Brooks lowered the water bottle, the plastic crunching beneath his grip. He shifted his panicked look from me to Phoebe. Only, by the time he was fully focused on Phoebe, he’d transformed into some charming version of Brooks Mason I’d not really seen before.
He’d done it! He’d read my mind!
But then he reached over and grabbed my hand. He laced his fingers through mine and squeezed—probably a little too tightly—before he smiled. That charming, heart-stopping, make-me-a-puddle-of-goo smile.
“I knew the moment I met her.” Brooks cast me the tail end of that delicious smile.
“Like—I wasn’t looking for a girlfriend.
I’ve only just moved here, and I need to focus on baseball, but .
. .” He fixed an absolutely dreamy expression on me.
“But it’s Brielle. She’s awesome, right?
I mean—she’s smart, she reads books, she’s cute, and to top it off, she loves baseball.
Not a lot of girls really get it, and she does. ”
Was he ever pulling this off!
His thumb stroked my hand.
Please stop! My heart couldn’t take it.
No. Don’t.
I really didn’t know what was happening to me.
“Brielle was just meant to be my shortstop,” Brooks finished.
Phoebe let out a noise somewhere between a whimper and a squeal. “You guys,” she shook her head as if in complete awe. “I don’t think anyone could have written a better romance than this.”
I could think of quite a few authors who could’ve pulled it off. I just wished I wasn’t the main character.