Chapter 27
Brooks
In some ways, I wanted to convince myself it wasn’t as big a deal as we were making it out to be.
Sure, we’d gone viral, and now we’d gone viral again.
But the more I thought about it, the more I realized it was actually pretty damaging.
If nothing else, to our own personal trustworthiness, my GPA, and potentially Brielle’s summer internship at Teen Writers.
Oh yeah, and I couldn’t forget the recruiter who thought I was such a good guy.
I hadn’t ever told Brielle about that pressure point, and now I was glad I hadn’t.
She’d feel worse than I knew she probably already did.
School was torture. I kept my head down. I felt Jenessa’s pitying eyes on me all through physics. I noted Brielle’s absence during Lit. In fact, I hadn’t seen her all day. She’d either gone home or she was hiding from me.
I needed to see her. I needed to get things cleared up as fast as possible. She didn’t need to face her dad alone. I’d go with her and take the fall. I mean, I was the one who’d agreed to the fake dating scheme in the first place.
The truth? I felt gutted about the whole thing. It was really hard to go to practice after school. The entire team was pretty quiet. Coach finally pulled us all together at the dugout for a meeting.
“So,” he started. “Stuff has happened today that is—well, I’d say typical teenage drama, but I guess this isn’t typical in that in my day, we didn’t have social media that spread it across the world.
” Coach looked at me. “So yeah, you’ve got a lot of extra attention lately and now get ready for the backlash. ”
I didn’t know what I was supposed to say, so I stayed silent.
Coach looked around at all the guys. “The fact is, this will blow over. It shouldn’t affect how we play or our games. It’s drama, and drama fades fast.”
“What else are you faking, Mason?” Hunter grumbled.
“Nothing,” I ground out.
“We know he’s not faking that he can play,” Reece offered. “That’s what’s important. That he can play the game. Right?”
A couple of the guys muttered their agreement.
“Right,” Coach nodded. “Now set it aside. Move on. I hate to be the one to tell you, but you all are likely going to break up with your girlfriends at some point, and there will be drama, fake or real, it doesn’t matter. So I want this to be done. Got it?”
The guys nodded.
“All right. Let’s play ball.” Coach slapped his hands together. The guys all jogged onto the field, but Coach put out an arm to stop me. “Hold up, Mason.”
Great.
I waited.
“So, a couple of things,” Coach started. “One, you’d better get that grade up for Lit, or we’re going to have problems. I know Brielle is your partner on the semester project.”
“I’ll get it done. Don’t worry,” I assured him, even though I wasn’t sure myself.
“Good.” He nodded. “Then my buddy—the recruiter?”
I was going to be sick.
“He’s—uh—he’s going to be here for the first game of the season. Not for you specifically, but ‘cause he’s a family friend. So he said he was interested in coming out to see the game, watch how you play, that sort of thing.”
A little bit of hope sparked in me. The recruiter was coming?
“So that means,” Coach’s eyes narrowed, and he leveled as stern a stare on me as I’d received in a long time.
“You’d better up your behavior. This whole lying to the school thing—it might be fun and games, but you’re part of a team.
You hear me? And I take the integrity and character of my players very seriously.
I was hopeful when we met that you’d be a responsible kid, and aside from this stupid stunt, you have been. ”
I waited.
“So don’t let me down. No more of this, got it?” he asked.
“Got it, Coach.” I nodded.
“Good. Now get out there.”
As I jogged to my position behind the plate, I couldn’t help but sense some relief. Okay. So that hadn’t been as bad as I’d thought it might be.
But even as I slammed my fist into my glove, I had the sickening feeling that Brielle’s experience wasn’t going to be so easy. Coach was one thing. But Mr. Walters? He was another.
And, I knew I was going to have to face him, too.
Brielle
By the time I got home, Mom was already at the door. The look on her face told me she knew everything. All she said was, “Mrs. Templeton called.”
Oh yeah. That. I’d skipped Lit—and any other classes—I hadn’t paid attention. There was no way I could face Brooks. I’d spent all day avoiding him. Not only was I mortified, but I was afraid he’d be furious with me. I was mad at myself.
I retreated to my bedroom and was getting ready to call Lia when Mom knocked on my door. She poked her head in. I was grateful she didn’t seem mad at me, but I think the whole disappointed look mingling with concern for me look was worse.
“Are you all right?” She stepped into the room.
I shrugged, sinking onto my bed. I picked up my stuffed monkey that I’d had since I was two. He was stained, worn,and floppy, but he was safe. I tucked him under my chin.
Mom leaned against the door jam. “Why?” she asked. “Why would you and Brooks pretend and lead everyone on like that?”
I could tell it didn’t make sense to her. In a way, it didn’t even make sense to me. I shrugged again. “I don’t know.”
“What do you mean, you don’t know? Brielle, you led the entire school to believe you were dating the popular new guy. You led Dad and me to believe it. Reece.”
Well, not Reece—he knew—but I wasn’t going to get him in trouble along with me.
“What parts of it were true?” Mom asked.
That was a loaded question I was afraid to ask myself.
Because I wanted it all to be true. I wanted it all to be a real experience.
What had started out as a sort of brilliant ploy to get people off our backs so we could focus on what we liked to do had quickly turned into me finding someone that I actually cared for.
That I wanted to date. Someone who I wished actually did have feelings for me.
“I don’t know,” I whispered. Tears in my throat pretty much stole my voice.
“You don’t know?” Mom repeated. “Or you don’t want to say?”
“I don’t know,” I answered. Lifting my eyes, I met her gaze, tears spilling over onto my cheeks and dripping on my monkey’s head. “In the end, all of it is real even though none of it—”
“Oh, baby girl,” Mom sighed. There was a lot of empathy in those three words. I knew in an instant Mom understood my feelings, even though she didn’t understand the details. She came over and sat beside me on my bed. “This is tough,” was all she said.
“I hate social media,” I sobbed. “I hate people nosing into my life. I wish the aunts didn’t think it was so important to constantly hound me about having a boyfriend. And my friends? They all thought I was boring. That my books and-and baseball—that they weren’t enough.”
“So the AI boyfriend part was true?” Mom bit back a smile.
I looked at her in disbelief. This wasn’t funny, but I nodded.
“You actually created a fake AI boyfriend to get Elle and Tracy and the twins off your back?”
I nodded again, then gulped. “And Jenessa and Claire.”
Mom struggled to keep her smile subdued, but I could see a little bit of admiration in her eyes.
She studied me for a moment, then said, “Listen. This is a mess. And I don’t like that you deceived us.
Not about this. We want to be able to trust you.
But . . . I will admit. The whole culture that puts so much emphasis on you having to be in a relationship as a teenager is frustrating. ”
“But—” I bit my tongue. It had started out that way, sure, but now I did want to be in a relationship. With Brooks. Only I wasn’t. I never really had been.
“You have feelings for him?” Mom asked outright.
Man, I thought talking to Dad was hard. Mom’s whole understanding bit made me feel even worse, because she was asking the hard questions. Dad would address my lying and faking things. But Mom? She was getting to the root of my feelings.
I nodded. I was done pretending.
She gave me a soft smile and reached out to pat my monkey’s head. “He needs a bath,” she said.
I looked at her.
Mom looked at me.
She didn’t need to say anything else. She’d heard me. She’d listened to my heart.
She knew it was breaking.
There really wasn’t anything that could be worse than that.