Chapter 18
Brooks
I didn’t want to put more pressure on Brielle.
That’s why I didn’t say anything to her about the recruiter who’d contacted Coach.
I thought I was getting to know her well enough now to know she’d really take it to heart—that my future on the team and maybe in baseball had to do with me keeping up the appearance of being a responsible and ethical athlete.
I was ethical in sports. Maybe just not in dating.
If they found out our entire relationship was faked, then that’d be a big knock against my integrity.
The funny thing? The whole reason we started fake dating was so people wouldn’t find out about Brielle’s AI boyfriend bit.
Now? We just looked like a walking romance story.
We made it through the rest of the day, skipping school.
I dropped Brielle—and Reece’s truck—off at her house, and then Reece gave me a ride home.
Apparently, Mr. Walters went to Principal Carson and told him, in no uncertain terms, that the media were not allowed to speak with his daughter about our relationship.
Kudos to Mr. Walters.
My dad got a call from school about me being absent.
He fibbed about a dentist appointment and apologized for not getting a note to the office.
No one was fooled, really. But it worked.
Then Dad made sure all my teachers emailed me homework for the missed classes, and I was told in no uncertain terms that if I didn’t get it all done, he’d refuse to let me try out for baseball.
I think Dad secretly hoped I’d crash out.
I didn’t.
I got it all done by 3 AM.
Besides, I knew if Dad ever put his foot down on my playing baseball, it’d probably be the final straw between him and Mom. Not because Mom loved baseball, but because she wanted me to pursue my dream.
Parents who have problems in their marriage try to tell the kids it’s not their fault. But I see why kids think it is. I mean, knowing in my head that my playing baseball or not was big enough to cause fights couldn’t really leave me feeling any differently.
I was glad when the week was over. I was glad to head over to the Brielle’s house Friday night.
I didn’t even mind the extra-tight handshake Mr. Walters gave me, as if he was reminding me who he was.
We ate pizza—I think the Walters family has a thing for pizza—and watched a movie.
Reece sat between Brielle and me on the couch, and her parents sat on a loveseat recliner.
I will admit, I was bummed I wasn’t sitting by Brielle.
But only because I wanted to tease her during the parts of the movie when a massive spider started chasing the main character.
I’d learned two days before how much she hated spiders when I caught her hyperventilating by her locker when an arachnid the size of my pinky fingernail scurried out from under one of her shoes.
She’d told me to call 911. I told her there was no way.
She didn’t talk to me for the rest of the day, and that’s when I also learned that Brielle can really hold a grudge when you don’t go all John Wick on spiders.
After the movie, Brielle and her mom went into the kitchen, and Mr. Walters told Reece and me to follow him. He led us into the garage and pulled three cans of Mountain Dew out of the fridge, handing them to us.
“Level with me,” he said, popping his can open with a snap.
Reece didn’t seem worried.
I was immediately freaked out.
“How nervous are you guys for the season to start?” Mr. Walters wanted to talk baseball. Oh! That I could do!
“Nervous,” I admitted.
“Confident,” Reece said at the same time.
“Well,” Mr. Walters replied, “you’re pretty much safe when it comes to your position on varsity. Tryouts for you and a couple of the guys are mostly a formality.”
“Yeah.” Reece nodded. He wasn’t arrogant or cocky about it. I mean, it’s just a fact. Reece was their pitcher.
“Are you feeling strong?” Mr. Walters directed his question to me.
“I think so,” I replied. I didn’t really know how to answer it. Did I feel confident in my skills? I guess as confident as I could. Was I nervous about the possibility that recruiters might be watching me this season? Yeah. Big time.
“You’re gonna do good.”
I froze. The can of soda was halfway to my mouth.
Mr. Walters was looking right at me, and he seemed sincere. Like he respected me. Like he meant what he said.
“Remember, do your best. I’ve seen you and Reece working on strength training and on your reflexes. Approach ball like you approach life. You go at it straight, confident, and honest. God will take you the rest of the way, and where you end up, well, that’s His decision. You just do your best.”
I hadn’t ever heard baseball tryouts put in those terms before. But it made sense—even if it didn’t—I mean, I don’t know how much God really cares about high school tryouts.
Mr. Walters clapped his hand over my shoulder and read my mind. “God doesn’t care about tryouts so much as He cares about you.”
With that, Mr. Walters headed back inside, and Reece followed as though it all hadn’t been a big deal.
But it was a big deal. A really big deal.
I couldn’t think of the last time I’d had another guy who was like a dad, give me advice in a way that didn’t leave me feeling like I had to do something extra.
Mr. Walters treated me as though I were enough.
Do my best. That was it. No expectations from him that I’d make it or that I’d fail. I could just—be.
Now probably wasn’t the time to admit this to anyone, but if Mr. Walters was always like this, I’d never want to break up with Brielle, just so I could keep coming over here for pizza and Friday nights.
It kind of felt like, in his way, Mr. Walters wanted me to succeed at life—not just at baseball or at books, like my dad would prefer.
And when I went back inside, I saw Mr. Walters drop a kiss on Mrs. Walters’s cheek. Reece and Brielle were snapping each other with dish towels. The TV blared in the background, and Mrs. Walters popped popcorn in the microwave.
Yeah. Everything else didn’t matter at this point. I was seriously never going to break up with Brielle.
I’d failed at Valentine’s Day. It was last week, but even now, girls were still walking by me mouthing, “Chocolate?”, like I’d given Brielle a bag of dog food instead.
I hadn’t really cared, and neither had she—I don’t think—but after hanging out with the Walters family on Friday night and with tryouts this week, I just felt .
. . I don’t know. I wasn’t sure how I felt, to be honest. Mr. Walters had said to go at it straight, confident, and honest, and I think he meant that about life—not just baseball.
What bugged me was that Brielle and I weren’t being honest. Not really.
Only now, as all of it was evolving, I wasn’t being honest in an entirely different way.
Something about Brielle, the Walters family, even their faith was just—I liked it.
I liked being around them. I liked Brielle’s quirkiness.
The fact that she hated spiders, loved some book dude named Mr. Darcy, could quote baseball stats, had attitude, and even had her BFF, Lia from Canada in her back pocket at least 70% of her time when she wasn’t at school.
But it was more than that. Brielle had been gracious.
About everything. So, maybe I couldn’t fix it all.
I couldn’t break up with her and set life back to rights.
I couldn’t reverse the viral video or the fact that we were under a microscope. But I could be honest about one thing.
I could be honest that I’d botched Valentine’s Day.
I mean, even I knew that throwing a bag of chocolate at your girlfriend in the school hallway was pretty lame.
So, I wanted to make up for it.
I wanted her to feel special. Even if we both knew we were just friends, I still wanted her to feel . . . I wanted to say . . . heck, I don’t know what I really wanted. But I’d stashed a bouquet of tulips in my locker before school started for just this reason.
Now I felt pretty dumb—and conspicuous— but whatever. I walked into class with the pink and white tulips in a vase that the lady at the flower store had put together.
Mrs. Templeton looked up from her desk, and a smile stretched across her face, reminding me of that cat in the Alice in Wonderland cartoon Mom made me watch when I was a kid. The cat always freaked me out, but Mrs. Templeton pulled off the wide smile a lot better.
I saw a couple of the girls’ heads pop up from whatever they were reading, and then I spotted Brielle.
She was in the far back corner of the room, so the oohs and aahs hadn’t reached her yet, but when they did, she looked up at me.
Her eyes got huge. Her hair was down around her shoulders, too—I liked it that way—and she was wearing a baseball jersey even as she held a book in her hands. For a second, I couldn’t breathe.
What had I been thinking?
“Who’s the tulips for, Mason?” one of the guys called.
Another whistled.
A few of the girls mimed like they were going to pass out. One of them turned from me to Brielle and kept repeating, “Oh my gosh, oh my gosh, oh my gosh.”
There was no turning back now.
I made my way to Brielle’s desk and set the flowers in front of her. There were six pink tulips and six white ones.
Brielle just looked at them with absolutely no expression on her face now.
I was screwed.
This was not good.
She—
“Why?” Brielle looked up at me.
I could see in her eyes that she was insecure. She sincerely didn’t get it.
“I—Call it the ‘next inning’. Valentine’s Day chocolate was the first; this is the second.”
“What’s the third, fourth, and fifth gonna be?” The same guy as before called.
“Be quiet, Tyler,” Mrs. Templeton chided. She held her hands clasped against her chest, as if she were witnessing something monumental.
Brielle looked from the flowers to me, and then she leaned toward me.
What do I do? she mouthed.
Oh man. Shoot. It had never dawned on me she’d take this as part of the game. The charade. The fake dating act. Here I was being authentic, and she thought I was acting!
Brielle widened her eyes even more, and so I did the only thing I could think of doing. I reached down and pressed a kiss to her forehead and whispered, “Just be happy. I sucked at Valentine’s Day, and you deserve these.”
I still didn’t think she took me seriously.
I retreated to my desk, and it was only then that I realized at least nine of the girls had their phones aimed at me. They’d been recording. The whole thing. And I was the dumbest idiot on the planet.