Take your pick.
Regardless, Brooks was a hit. Now, to keep Aunt Elle from buying my nonexistent boyfriend a plane ticket.
"Oh my gosh, I’m dying!” I sat in the bathtub with the bathroom door locked and stared down at my phone. I saw half of Lia’s face, and the rest of the screen was a fantastic view of her bedroom ceiling.
“What happened?” Lia asked. “I could only hear bits and pieces. Your aunts sounded crazy excited!”
“They were!” I shot a glance at the bathroom door. Sunday family dinners were nice on one hand, because I got to spend time with the extended family weekly. On the other hand, it created these types of situations. The kind where I hid in Aunt Elle’s bathtub and hoped my cousins, Jake and Jadon, didn’t go all FBI on the door and break it down. I could see seventeen-year-old Jake now,lazily leaning on the doorframe with the door in pieces on the floor. He’d stare at me and shake his head, arms crossed, while Jadon—who was my age and had just gotten his driver’s license—would voice what both guys were thinking.
“Really, Bri? A fake boyfriend?”
Yeah. Jake and Jadon would see right through my little charade.
“Brielle?” Lia called.
“Oh, sorry.” I averted my eyes from the bathroom door. It was still intact. There was no sign or sound of the cousins judging me.
“So?” Lia tried again.
“So, my Aunt Elle wants to buy Brooks a plane ticket to come visit.”
“Shut up.”
“Yep.” I pressed my lips together in exasperation. “See what I mean? My aunts are like fictional fairy godmothers—only the super intrusive kind.”
“Just ignore them.” Lia offered her always-helpful advice. “My mom’s cousin is like that and after a few hours she loses interest. You can typically divert old people like them if you bring up vitamins, gossip from church, or news of someone having a baby.”
“I don’t know any gossip from church,” I countered. The truth was, I didn’t think we weresupposedto gossip. That wasn’t a Ten Commandment too, was it?
“Vitamins, then. Mention zinc or vitamin D, and they’ll go off on it.”
“My aunts are way past those basic vitamins,” I frowned.
“Fine. Pick…” Lia thought for a second. “Pick something more controversial, like folic acid.”
“Folic acid is controversial?” I crinkled my face in confusion.
“Fine.” Lia jostled her phone as she repositioned it to lean against something, and I was able to see more of her face. “Then go the baby route.”
“No one has had a baby,” I countered.
“No one?” Lia’s voice went up an octave in surprise.
“Nope.”
“Literally no one?”
“No. Well,” I hesitated, “I guess my old Sunday school teacher’s daughter did. But she lives in Ohio or something.”
“Perfect. Drop that nugget of info and watch the aunts switch directions.”
“I’m fine if they want to go on about Brooks—that’s why I created him. I just don’t want Elle to buy a plane ticket.”
“She won’t,” Lia assured me. “No adult woman over forty buys a plane ticket for a teenage boy without consulting with his parents. It’d be beyond weird. Not to mention, ew.”
“Good point.” I tried to take comfort in that. But the problem was that Elle didn’t always think through her impulses until later.
“So.” Lia’s tone of voice indicated she was subject shifting on me. “You ready to head back to school tomorrow?”
