I had no clue what to say, so I said the first thing that came to mind. “Is that all?”
“Is that all?” Brielle’s mouth dropped open, and if it was possible, I thought her green eyes got greener. “Is thatall? That’s not enough consequence for you? Even if we decided to mutually break up now, people will post about it, and we’ll still be under the relationship microscope, only worse. Now they’ll analyzewhywe broke up. They’ll analyze what ruined their romance novel.”
Brielle leaned forward, grabbed my hands, and gave them a little shake. “Brooks! You haveno ideahow rabid high school girls are about these types of stories! This isn’t going to just go away!”
“This is why romance novels are dumb,” I muttered.
“Excuse me?” Brielle pulled back and dropped my hands.
“They give girls unrealistic ideas and guys suffer for it.”
“Ok. You can’t say that until you’ve read one,” Brielle crossed her arms.
“But am I wrong?” I pressed.
“Well—not entirely, but—”
“So I’m not wrong?”
“Romance novels are really good! And there’s nothing wrong with a girl wanting a real-life romance!”
“Soooo,” I was trying too hard to understand. “You actuallydidwant a boyfriend?”
“No!” Brielle flung herself backward in exasperation. “You’re never going to get it. Okay.” She sat back up. “I’m going to get you a romance novel. You’ll read it and then tell me it’s a waste of time.”
“I never said it was a waste of time, I just said it created expectations for girls that have now become our problem.”
“Will you read one?” Dang it if Brielle didn’t have a pouty look on her face that was stupid cute. Why? None of this conversation made any sense. It was exactly what I’d always thought about girls. They don’t make sense. They get mad at the same time they defend what they’re mad about. What are guys supposed to do? Just sit back and ride it out?
But then . . . the extra credit. I needed the extra credit project. I needed grades that would keep me qualified for the baseball team.
“You want me to read a romance novel?” I verified.
Brielle smiled then and nodded. Almost happily. I wasn’t sure why. Nothing had been resolved, and I felt like we were way off topic now.
“Fine.” I threw my hands up and then let them fall back to my lap. “I’ll read a romance novel.”
I’d just wanted to help a girl out. That was all this had been at the beginning. Then, it was the extra credit. Now? It was like the time my cat had tangled itself up in a whole bunch of string I’d left out after building a kite. We couldn’t find the beginning of the string from the end, and everything in between might have made sense at one point, but now it didn’t.
Now, we just had a tangled mess.
Somehow, we had to work with it because it wasn’t going away.
Apparently—at least according to Brielle—I had to read a romance novel to understand it all.
I was more confused than ever.
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’sappalling. I don’t even know how baseball players with that average have jobs in the MLB.”
