“Okay, I’ll talk to you tonight like normal. We are supposed to get to Oak Mountain later tonight, I’ll talk to you around 10. Bye Brandon.
“Bye Sarah.”
As Brandon hung up the phone, Matt says, “Holy shit dude, you really are dating a rock star!!!!”
Brandon shook his head and as he left the lounge to talk to his principal Bret Lawerance he said, “She’s a country star, less cocaine, more cowboy boots”
***
Sarah hung up the phone and looked at Morgan, “Well he took that well.”
Morgan nodded, “I figured he would, he knew this was a possibility, and while it’s annoying and stupid, he will handle it. Hopefully with the changes he’s going to make, it’ll be hard for anyone to track him down.”
“I know, but part of me wonders if we could get ahead of it, releasing a statement or I could post the picture of us at the beach on Instagram. Maybe if it wasn’t so mysterious, people would leave him and us alone.”
Morgan frowned a bit, “That is definitely an option, but then we’d have people digging into when you met/how long you’ve known each other. And as your manager, I think that would be bad, you’d get branded as a whore or something like that. As your friend though they are stupid, and you two shouldn’t have to hide your relationship.”
Sarah nodded and thought for a minute, “You’re right, I’ll wait until we meet the parents, then I guess we can go public.”
“I’m sorry Sarah, this is a pain in the ass, but once the tour is over, it’ll get easier. I hope.”
Sarah sighed, “I hope you’re right…”
***
Brandon walked into the main office and walked up to his principal’s door, seeing it was open, he knocked and stuck his head in, “Hey Bret, you got a minute?”
Bret Lawerance looked up, “Sure man, come on in.”
Brandon entered the office, shut the door and sat down. Bret got a concerned look on his face, “Uh oh, is everything okay? Did you get another job?”
Brandon laughed, “Oh I wish it was that simple.”
When Bret didn’t respond, Brandon slid his phone across the desk and continued, “So that picture you see was posted on the celebrity gossip site TMZ, the guy in both pictures is me. The woman is Sarah Bixby, one part of the country duo Biloxi Bronco’s. Sarah and I are dating. We have kept it quiet from pretty much everyone, but it appears the media has gotten ahold of it. They will probably start digging to try and figure out who I am. There’s a concern that they will be intense because I’m not a celebrity, I’m just a teacher. I, well we thought it was best to let you know in case something came up.”
Bret listened intently, thought for a moment then said, “Okay, I’ll make sure school security knows, but what are you doing to try and stay anonymous?”
“Well, I’m going to make my social media accounts as vague and anonymous as I can, and they already are a good bit, so hopefully that will make it harder to track me down, and hopefully once their tour is done, they will lose interest, or someone will do something stupid and our relationship won’t matter.”
“Okay, that’s a great start, and I hope you’re right, this could really cause a disruption and we don’t want that.”
“Of course, that’s why I’m wanting to get ahead of this and talk to you before anything else pops up.”
As the bell rang for the end of lunch, Brandon stood up and began to exit Bret’s office, before he left Bret said, “Congratulations, she’s a real looker and you deserve a nice girl.”
Ch. 3-One week later (Monday, two weeks before Thanksgiving)
As the prior week went on, things had stayed relatively quiet, there was a picture that propped up of Sarah leaving a hotel wearing a hoody of Brandon’s she had kept that had the logo of the team Brandon coached, but luckily there were a bunch of schools with the same name as his all across the country and Sarah played it off as something she found at a thrift store. Brandon went about his career like nothing was different, there were a few rumors around the school about “Mr Baker and the Country Singer,” but nothing more than high school drama that was replaced every other day with something new. He and Matt got some good laughs out of the rumors; their favorite so far was that he was actually part of another band and that’s how he and Sarah had met; even though it was known that he had no music ability or talent as a teacher talent show had proved earlier in the year.
All hell broke loose though, and it was sort of Brandon’s fault. The local paper had done a preseason look at the local spring sports teams and they interviewed Brandon and he was pictured wearing the exact same hoodie logo as Sarah had been earlier the week before. Suddenly someone in the area put two and two together and figured out it was Brandon in the TMZ picture. As Brandon arrived at school, he noticed people milling around the teacher’s lot and as he pulled his truck in, two local reporters were standing there.
“Brandon, is it true that you are dating Sarah Bixby?”
Another shouted, “How did you two meet? Is it serious?”
Brandon tried to ignore them, but as he got closer to the door, he stopped, “Guys, I’ve always talked to you when you needed stories for my games, leave me alone.”
Brandon walked to his classroom, slumped into his desk and groaned. He pulled out his phone texting Sarah, “Well it appears the cat is out of the bag, local paper and news have figured us out.”
He texted his principal next to let him know, he responded back shortly, “Oh I know, we’ve had three calls already, people wanting to know if you work here, or if they can have your number. Keep your head low, good luck with your kids…”
The next four classes were pure hell. All his students wanted to do was talk about his relationship, he had more problems with students than he had ever had, even during his student teaching. Finally, during 6th period he snapped, yelling at his kids that his personal life was none of their business and that they had one job, that was to learn about US government. Considering he had never yelled before, his students clammed up and it got around that he was angry so the other 3 periods of the day went well, it was absolutely quiet in his room.
At the end of the day he finally had a chance to check his phone. He saw he had 4 missed texts from Sarah. The first read, “Oh no, I’m so sorry!”
The second, “Let me know how your day is going.”
The third, “I know you’re busy but I’m thinking about you. Morgan is handling everything on my end.”
The fourth sent right before the end of the day, “Please call me after conditioning, I’m worried about you. Let me know what I can do to help.”
Brandon went to the restroom, changed, and headed to the baseball locker room and batting cage. As he walked in, his players looked at him and all fell quiet. Finally one of his seniors spoke up, “Heard you had a rough day coach, we’re sorry.”
There were murmurs of agreement around the room. As the room fell quiet, Brandon looked around before saying, “Thanks guys, the rumors are true, but I don’t want to talk about it. Only baseball, got it?” The players all nodded in unison, Brandon added, “Good, now someone get in the cage.”