So my cousin Jim is 18 years old now and he is a bit shy and timid around girls and has never had a girlfriend or even any friends. Although he is a pretty smart kid at school and excels in each class. So me and my other cousin Tom love to tease him a lot for our amusement (yes it's horrible and we shouldn't..). But he is always nice about it and never gets mad at us.. perhaps because he knows we are bigger than him and he can't hurt us? or maybe its just that he has a kind heart, that could also be a reason why.  So anyways recently my other cousin Tom suggested we should ask one of our female friends to "pretend" to like Jim and show interest in him.. We thought that would be hilarious.  At first our friend Ashley was hesitant to do it but we finally convinced her.. We told her no kissing or making out just make him feel good and pretend you like him romantically.. So for the entire week Ashley was talking to Jim, she was texting him , going to movies etc.  Eventually, Jim became so utterly happy I had never seen him like this before. We thought it was amusing and we couldn't help but laugh.. but Ashley insisted that it should be over and we should just tell him it was a prank because shes tired of pretending. So the 3 of us decided to invite him to my place to tell him. When he arrived he had flowers with him which he gave to Ashley..  I saw the look on his face he had the most happiest face i had seen in my life(not exagerrating).  So then Jim looks at me and Tom and he hugs us saying "guys I just wanna thank you for arranging a date between me and Ashley if it wasnt for you i would never meet her!"  And then something shocking happened which made me feel horrible..  he started weeping out of joy and saying he thought he would never have a girl to like him ever but he is glad that that isn't true any longer..  At this point, Ashley was just looking down out of guilt and embarassment and Tom just gave me a look that said "you tell him..".    Thus, I had to find the courage to calmly explain to Jim that Ashley was in fact hired by us to pretend to like you for a week because we thought it would be funny however we are sorry because we did not realize that this could potentially hurt your feelings..    Suddenly, Jim's whole faced changed and he was in disbelief he looked at Ashley and said "is this really true?"  and Ashley said "Im really sorry Jim.. your a nice kid".    Then Jim abruptly left my house.   I tried texting him and calling him but he doesn't want to reply.

This is the first time Jim has been mad at me or Tom.. I think this was a horrible prank and how can I apologize to him? What should i do?

Update:  A lot of people are wondering if I may be joking about the whole thing, unfortunately i didn't make it up and it all really happened. I wish I could go back and cancel the whole prank but I can't do that. I have tried contacting my cousin Jim and still no luck.. his parents told me that he doesn't want to talk to me or Tom. I just hope he is ok thats all i care about at this point.

Update 12/22/2015:  I have tried numerous times contacting Jim and trying to talk to him but have failed miserably. He has deleted me(and Tom) from Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat.  This has really pissed me off because I was man enough to acknowledge my wrong doings and apologize but he refuses to even look me in the eye and hear me out. He is disrespecting me and Tom at this point we are both older than him by 3 or 4 years.  He has even told his parents not to accept my phone calls or reply to my text messages. Tom tried to contact Jim's only friend Chris and he has apperantly told him that he wishes to never see us again(according to Chris). So at this time I wont bother sweating over this thing anymore because I have done the right thing and apologized(numerous times) and if he chooses to be disrespectful and immature about it it's his problem.

Dr. Filthy's got you covered

Hmm... I have to be honest, but if I were Jim, I'd probably never forgive you. It's indeed a horrible prank. But let's pretend he's a nice and not a very vengeful man like me, because as you said he seems very nice. The only possible thing you can do is apologise, a lot, say that you're very, very sorry and that you will never be such a jerk with him. If he acepts your apologies, fine, then from now on try to stop these pranks and to be supportive and nice with him. Maybe he'll not forget, but maybe he'll forgive. But, as I said, this is very hard to take so give him time.

Messing with love is a dangerous thing. I knew a guy whose brother did a similar thing to some dude and the guy ended up committing suicide out of depression and sadness but yeah, that was pretty low.

In my day that was all in good dirty fun. These days kids hang them selves over stuff like that.

You may have just mad his day in life by getting him a girl and ripped it from him at the same time shaming and embarrassing him like a total worthless loser he probably thinks he is and now is sure he is.

Had he socked you in the face broke your nose id say he'd get over it, but how he just bolted and ran away. Not good.

Nah, I bet he's thinking right about how he could kick your ass!

Im being completely honest with you, and i need to say you were a complete and total idiot at doing this.You would hate if it happen to you, so why do that to others?People who are really shy have serious problems with trusting, and when they do trust in someone, they go full on with the trust.When you do something like this to a person that is really shy, it really does a great damage to his social skills.Be mindful next time

Having said that, I really dont think there is something you can do.My sincere advice is:give him time.Give him 2 or 3 weeks to cool things down, to give him time to think and all, and after that, try getting in touch with him but without forcing it.For example, try to convince him, throught one or two mensages, to hang out with you.If he refuses, wait 1 or 2 weeks to try again, and repeat until you succeed.If that dosent work, then well, I guess you just destroyed a great relationship with your cousin

I wish i could sit here and say this is a joke thread. But unfortunately it isn't.

No offense, but you're a monster. Poor guy. You should have known that something like this would set a guy like him off. Did you really think he would just shrug and laugh and say 'Oh you got me'?

If I were him I would never forgive you, and that would be letting you off easy.

It's just a Frank bro!