“Yessir.” It was all I could say. I looked beyond him when a movement caught my eye.
Mr. Walters looked over his shoulder.
Brielle stood there, her eyes red and swollen.
Mr. Walters looked back at me and speared me with his words. “I’ll give you ten minutes.”
Ten minutes.
I had ten minutes to fix a month’s worth of mess.
Mr. Walters wanted me to be honest?
No. I didn’t think he did. I didn’t think now was the time to tell Brielle that if I could change anything, I would change the fact that we’d called it “fake”. ‘Cause the truth was . . .? I really wished the entire thing had been real.
Chapter 29
Brielle
I wasn’t sure what to say. It was pretty obvious that Brooks felt the same way.
“Hey,” he said.
“Hey,” I answered.
It was a safe word, but it didn’t really get us very far.
“I’m sorry—” we both started at the same time. Then we laughed. Then we were silent. Brooks kicked the toe of his shoe against the base of a huge pot Mom had sitting outside the door, still filled with evergreen branches and a red bow—remnants of Christmas three months earlier. I hugged my arms around myself and tried to think of what to say.
“Have you looked online at all?” Brooks broke the silence.
Had I? Of course I had. Even though Lia had told me not to. Reece had threatened to confiscate my phone—being the protective older brother—but he forgot that I still had access via my laptop and tablet. Regardless, I’d looked. The comments about the video were all over the place.
I still believe in Broo-elle!
My heart is broken—this proves nothing you see online is real!
What a scam!
Wonder how much they got paid to fake this!
Just like everything else. Smoke and mirrors.
Come back to us, Brooks and Brielle!
“I’ve looked,” I finally answered.
Brooks nodded. “I shouldn’t have gone along with the whole thing. I’m really sorry, Bri.”
I sort of wished at this point that we’d just had one big misunderstanding. You know, like in the movies? Where the girl finds out something about the guy and gets mad at him—or the other way around—and then they found it was all a mistake, and suddenly they both admit they really do want each other?
But not us. There was no misunderstanding. Just two complicit people, AI, and the entire world of online stalkers all sucked into one big smoke screen of a relationship that never existed.
Darn.
I so wished it had.
I wished it’d been real. Every single second of it. I wished the tulips that were well on their way to dying in my room were still pink and white instead of wilting and dropping petals on my floor. I should’ve taken that as an omen of what was to come.
