“Brielle.” Lia said my name in a way that made it clear she knew I was hedging.
“And yet,” I argued, still avoiding the topic at hand, “a Major League player with that batting average is considered ‘excellent.’ There’s no way I’m cheering for someone who only finishes three books out of ten. The discrepancies in sports are remarkable.”
“Reading isn’t a sport,” Lia said.
“It should be.” I pulled out a bright red-covered book, then pushed it back in. I didn’t think that I should start Brooks on a romance novel titledFabulous Fabrications. The last thing I needed him to read was a romance between two people whose relationship was based on lies. “If reading were a sport,” I continued, “then I could be in the Olympics based on those averages. I’ve actually finished ten out of ten of the last books I started. Beat that average, Christian Yelich.” I glanced at my Brewers jersey hanging on my closet door. I loved Yelich. Don’t get me wrong. But put my reading average against his batting average, and the man’s career would be over.
“Brielle, you’re avoiding the issue.”
“What issue?” I played dumb. I had to, or I’d self-combust.
“Brooks. Your sudden surge to viral popularity. The truth that you’re even tolerating any of this is because you actually are developing a thing for him.”
I ignored my phone, which was lying on my desk. I hoped Lia liked her video view of my ceiling. I pulled another book off my shelf, debating, then rejected it. “I don’t have athingfor Brooks.”
“And you’d be willing to bet your loyalty for the Brewers on that?”
I stopped. Then I stalked over to my desk and looked down at my phone so Lia could see the gravity of my reaction. “A true Brewers fan would never wager anything against them.”
“Fine,” Lia accepted my rebuke. “Then you’d bet your entire book collection that you don’t have even a little something for Brooks Mason?”
I moved away from my phone and back to my bookshelf, running my hand along the spines. “They’re my babies! I couldn’t bet my babies!”
“Brielle!” Lia’s laugh was filled with both humor and exasperation.
“Listen,” I said before she could keep digging at the one topic I really didn’t want to investigate.LikingBrooks Mason would defeat the entire reason I came up with a boyfriend in the first place. I wanted to put an end to the whole “Brielle needs a boyfriend” thing. Now that it had blown up in my face, I especially didn’t want to addfeelingsto the list of things I had to figure out. “I need to pick out a book for Brooks to read. He thinks romance novels are a bad influence on us.”
“Well, some of them are. I mean, the spicy ones are unnecessary. I’m not dumb. I know that stuff happens in real life and that a lot of girls like to read it, but not me. I’m still in my Disney Princess phase of life.” Lia released a dreamy sigh.
“Me too. But Brooks says that’s putting unrealistic expectations on guys to live up to the heroes in the books.”
Lia laughed. “Of course it does! Name one real-life guy who is anything at all like theInheritance Gamesboys!”
“My point exactly!” I returned to my phone and met Lia’s emphatic expression with my own. “They’re so perfect because they’re fictional. I don’t expect Brooks to be like that.”
Lia smirked. “Brooks? Your boyfriend Brooks?”
“Stooooop!” I wailed. “Ugh. Lia. No. Yes. I mean—I prefer book boyfriends over real ones because I can dream and get all la-la and then go to a baseball game and pretend I fall in love with the catcher. But in the end, my life is controlled and in order and it’s all just fiction. I don’t expect that in real life—I don’twantthat in real life. So that’s where Brooks’s argument fails.”
“Does it fail though? I mean,” Lia’s tone of voice begged me to listen. So I did. “ifyoudidhave a little bit of a thing for him, would he be annoying you right now because he leaked your AI story to Jenessa? Major mistake there, in my opinion.”
“Well, yes, that was dumb, but he—he apologized,” I argued on his behalf, though I wasn’t quite sure why I did. “And—I’mthe one who got myself into the AI mess. He just got sucked intoit.”
“Soheshould be annoyed atyou, then, because you’re not the perfect romance novel heroine.”
“There are no perfect romance novel heroines,” I concluded. “They’re all a mess. They need the hero to rescue them.”
We were silent for a long time. I think we’d talked circles and sort of proved Brooks’s point, but I’d never admit it out loud, because I liked romance novels too much.
I yanked a light blue book from my bookshelf.Pride and Prejudice.“Jane Austen. I’m going to have Brooks read Jane Austen. No one can argue anything negative about the queen of romance.”
“And there’s nothing perfect about Mr. Darcy,” Lia concluded.
“Nothing at all,” I said.
Then we both released dreamy sighs—and for some reason, I had the instant picture in my head of Brooks Mason reading my copy ofPride and Prejudicewhile playing one-handed catch with a baseball, and my stomach did a little flip.
Lia was right. I was developing athingfor Brooks Mason. But I had no intention of telling anyone.
