I yelped. I swung my fist—side effect of having a small handle on self-control—and it connected with Brooks’s arm. The lid of the to-go coffee cup he held popped off like a black plastic frisbee, and half of the drink became a geyser before landing onmy shoe.
“Ahh!” I lifted my foot. My new Converse tennis shoes were a light blue and had cost me half of my birthday money. Being baptized by coffee was an honor for most things, but not my new shoes.
“Try again,” Brooks said—instead of apologizing. He extended his other hand with the other cup of coffee he held that hadn’t erupted all over my shoes. “Reece told me you liked coffee.”
I shook my shoe as though somehow the coffee would just splash right off of it. “I like iced caramel lattes.” I didn’t mean to sound ungrateful, but . . .
“Oh.” Brooks shrugged. “Guess I get two coffees then. Or—one and a half.” He held up the spilled coffee as if to say “cheers.”
I reached for it. “I’ll take it.”
Half full or not, it had coffee in it, and I needed coffee. I peered into the paper cup. “What is it?”
“Caramel latte,” Brooks replied. “I just didn’t know about the ice part.”
“Thanks,” I mumbled, trying not to come off as a total brat. I sucked in a breath to steady myself.
Brooks must have heard the shudder in it. “Bad night?”
“Bad night. Bad morning.” I tried my locker door again. It wouldn’t budge.
“Here.” Brooks did a one-handed wrestle with the contraption, and it popped open for him without much coercion.
“Go figure.” I was muttering again, but I emptied the contents of my bag inside as I balanced my coffee in one hand.
“So, Shortstop, what’s our move today?”
“Our move?” I eyed him.
“We’re public now, so . . . what? Should I pass you a note or something like our parents used to do in class when they were kids?”
“Ew. No.” I shut my locker door.
“Okay. Ummmm, hold hands?”
“Definitely not.” No touching. I didn’t like touching people I didn’t know that well. It made my skin crawl. At least—I hesitated—well, maybe Brooks was . . .no. I’d consider that later. Besides, we were breaking up soon anyway. So, holding hands? That was out of the question.
And then I was bombarded by a million thoughts, one of which was blinking in my mind like a neon sign that was really tired of being ignored. What had started out as an ingenious way for me to divert attention from my love life had turned into a real-life scenario that was ridiculous, and—if I were to think completely logically—unnecessary. I mean, the whole point of creating a fake AI boyfriend in the beginning was to reduce stress. Now that Brooks had appeared in real life—well, there was no stress reduction. If anything, it was worse—just a different kind of worse.
I readjusted my grip on the coffee cup. “I think—” I took a nervous gulp of theveryhot latte that I’d forgotten wasn’t iced. As it scalded my throat, I managed to gasp out, “—we should break up.”
His blue eyes flickered. I wasn’t quite sure what that meant. Brooks scrunched up his face as if he were in super deep thought. It only made him cuter. That wasn’t helping. Finally, he spoke. “Okay.”
“Okay?” I parroted.
He shrugged. “You’re the one who started this. I was just trying to help.”
Brooks was awfully accommodating.
“And thanks for that.” I tried to be polite. “But this is just dumb. And my dad is—pretty mad.”
Now Brooks paled a little. He shifted his feet. “Yeah, well, I don’t want to make your dad hate me.”
I knew he was more worried about his friendship with Reece and a potential spot on the baseball team. Not that Dad had any influence on that, but Reece might, and if Dad didn’t want Reece hanging out with Brooks . . . okay. I could see Brooks’s thought process.
“What about the money?” he asked.
“What money?”
