Wait.
I sat bolt upright in bed and thumbed to my home screen. My app had notifications too. I opened it quickly and checked.
Over250,000?
I didn’t even bother to look at why. I instantly called Lia, who picked up at the first ring. Her face filled my screen. Wide eyes. Horror. Her mouth gaped open, and she kept making squeaking gasps that sounded like she was dying and resuscitating herself simultaneously.
“Whaaaat?” she repeated over and over.
“What?” I was still bewildered. “I have a gajillion texts, and what is happening on my socials? What went viral?”
“You!” Lia gasped. “Youwent viral! Even mybrothersaw it this morning, and we’re inCanada! You’ve goneinternational!”
“What?” Apparently, that was about all either of us could say in between fragmented sentences.
Lia’s phone shook as she sat down on her bed and then fell back on her pillows. She held the screen over her face, her Blond hair splayed out all over the pillow. “You and Brooks—you’re social media famous.”
I laughed nervously because none of it made sense. “What?” I said again, heartily sick of the word.
Lia sat up, and her video jittered until she finally held still. “Someone posted a video of Brooks putting a sweatshirt on you at a baseball game.”
I didn’t even respond because—well—yes. I responded. “So? Who cares?”
Lia’s eyes widened. “The caption says, ‘AI boyfriend comes to life’!”
“What!” I shrieked. I swung my legs out of bed like I was going to take off running, but I didn’t. I just sat there.
“Yeah.” Lia nodded so vehemently her phone shook again. “It literally outs your whole AI fake boyfriend scheme and calls it an ‘AI love story come true’!”
“Buthow?” I didn’t know if I should pass out, scream, or throw up. “The only people who knew I even created a fake AI boyfriend were you and Reece.”
“Someone else must’ve found out. You’re a freaking love story gone viral. The video—so cute, by the way—it’s like every girl’s fairy tale romance. A make-believe boyfriend suddenly comes to life? Yeah. TikTok loves it.”
“But he didn’tcome to life. It’s not like I made an AI creation and somehow breathedoxygen into him!”
“It doesn’t matter. Watch the video. It swoops in a picture of your AI boyfriend, with all the details of that epic charade, and thenbam! In comes the video of Brooks cuddling you up in his sweatshirt, all dressed in baseball gear and looking like he stepped out of a romance novel. Read the comments!”
So I did. I flicked over to TikTok and saw the video. What’s worse, I saw some of the comments.
“This is the cutest thing I’ve ever seen!”
“I can’t! The way he looks at her makes me melt!”
“I suddenly love baseball!”
“Her AI boyfriend became REAL? I’m so not okay!”
I sagged back onto my bed, staring into my phone and praying that God would somehow erase the last few weeks of my life and give me a do-over. But that’s not how the Lord worked. I knew this. And if it was how He worked, I highly doubted He’d be offering me the do-over instead of some international crisis or something.
I sucked in a breath under the assumption that more air would calm me down. It didn’t. “What do I do now?”
Lia gave a nervous laugh. “Ummm…well, you can’t break up with Brooks. That’s a hard no. The world of social media would hate you for it. You’re like the—the poster couple of epic real-life fairy tales come true.”
“But none of it is true. And I still want to know who found out about my AI boyfriend and then leaked it to the press!”
“Hardly the press, Brielle.”
“No. Worse.Social media.”
