A Trip in the Fall Pt. 02

Ch. 1: 3 weeks after Brandon returned from his trip (Monday)

Another Monday and Brandon found himself dragging his ass out of bed. Like pretty much every night since he returned, he found himself up until midnight or later Zooming or talking to Sarah on the phone. The perk to this was that he had time to get things graded and he was plenty prepared for the rest of the semester which was set to end at Christmas.

The downside to these late hours was that Brandon had always been an "old man." He enjoyed his sleep, going to bed around 10 on school nights and not much after 11 on weekends, throwing in a nap on occasion and that was his perfect world. Since coming home, that schedule was all out of whack. The newest thing they had started at least once a week, they would pick a movie to watch on Netflix or Amazon Prime and then watch it together while on Zoom. It was cheesy as hell, but it gave them a sense of normalcy and a bit of a feeling of being a normal couple.

There was that term again, couple. Brandon still had a hard time believing that he was dating the country superstar Sarah Bixby. So far they had managed to keep it a secret from the press which was a feat in and of itself. Someone had snapped a picture of them saying goodbye and Sarah had been questioned a couple of times by reporters asking who he was. She just avoided the question and it seemed that the attention had died down. She had mentioned to her family that she was seeing someone, but had left out how they met. She had given them the basic information about him, but that was the extent; Brandon had been mum about the whole thing. He had told his buddy Matt that he had a good time on his trip and left it at that. He confided in his dad that he had met someone, her name was Sarah, and that she worked with Morgan. Obviously since his dad knew, that meant his mom knew and she was prying more and more as the weeks went on. He figured he was going to have to give them more or they would lose their mind.

Brandon showered, headed to school, and got through his morning classes. As 4th period was wrapping up, one of his students, Haillee, came up to his desk, "Mr. Baker, can I ask you something?"

"Sure Haillee, what's up?"

The student turned her phone to him, showed him a picture and said "Is this you?"

Brandon took the phone from her, zoomed in and was confronted with a picture that had just showed up on TMZ under the headline "The first picture of Sarah Bixby's secret man?" It was a grainy photo that apparently someone had snapped when they were at dinner in Charlottesville. In it, Brandon was across from Sarah and beside Morgan with Sarah's hand touching his arm as they laughed. Beside that image showed the picture of them saying goodbye where you could just make out parts of the side of Brandon's face.

Brandon handed the phone back, "That's funny Haille, how would I know, let alone date a country superstar?"

Haillee looked at him, "Looks an awful lot like you."

Brandon stood, grabbed his lunch out of his fridge and shooed the student out of his room as he headed to the teachers lounge.

As he walked into the lounge, Matt was already there, he let out a loud "FUCK!"

Matt dropped his fork, "What the hell dude?"

Brandon sat, fumbling with his phone, pulling up the image, slid it over to Matt, "Notice anything?"

Matt looked at the phone and said, "Yeah, it's the band you went and saw, some dude is with them....HOLD ON! That dude is you, and the hot chick is touching you!"

Brandon rested his head in his hands and said, "So, I've been holding back on you and it's probably going to get big fast. I spent ALOT of time with Sarah, and we are kinda a thing now."

"You're kidding right, there's no way that you're seeing a country star."

"No I'm not kidding, I'm dating Sarah Bixby."

Brandon stood and smacked Brandon on the back, "My dude!!! You gotta give me the details."

Brandon munched quietly on his bag of chips, "There's nothing to tell, she's a sweet, genuine person, wanted to be a librarian before the music got big."

"So you hooked up with her?"

"Dude come on, this isn't one of your one night stands, I'm not going to spill the beans."

"Come on man, just tell me is she as hot in person as on tv?"

Brandon smiled, "Dude she's absolutely stunning."

Before Matt could say another word, Brandon's phone rang. He looked down at it and saw "S.B-Morgans friend" appear. Brandon stood up, "I gotta take this."

As Brandon walked to the corner of the lounge, Matt said, "It's her isn't it."

Brandon ignored Matt, answering the phone with, "Hey, I think I know why you're calling.

Ch. 2

Sarah was comfortable. Her and Brandon had fallen into a routine that was working for them. With Zoom, calls and texts throughout the day, they were becoming closer and everything just felt natural. She was looking forward to seeing Brandon again over the Thanksgiving holiday, then sorting out spending more time together, maybe a week over Christmas. Everything had been going well as the tour began to wind down, only 3 more shows with the last one being the next Friday back home in Biloxi where her friends and family could celebrate with her. Her career was on track, her love life was looking up, then the proverbial shit hit the fan when someone sent a decent picture of Brandon's face to TMZ. Now she and Morgan were frantically trying to protect Brandon to save him from harassment.

Sarah was so relieved to hear Brandon's voice, she said solemnly, "Hey baby, I'm sorry to call during the middle of school."

"No worries, I wish it was under better circumstances. A student showed me the picture right before I came to lunch."

Sarah responded, "Yeah, our social media manager saw it and called Morgan. She says hi, but is trying to sort out if they will be able to put a name with your face."

Brandon nodded as he spoke on the phone, "Well, I've always kept my Facebook, Twitter and Instagram locked down because of students, I'll go through and change profile pictures to something non-descript, that should help, maybe change the name to my first and middle name, then it'll make it harder for them to find me."

"Wow, that is a lot of steps, have you been thinking about this?"

Brandon chuckled, "I have to admit, I figured this would happen someday so I already thought how I could try to negate it. I've come clean with my buddy Matt, but I think I may have to go talk to my admin team next."

"Brandon, I'm sorry you're having to do this, you don't need this piled on your plate. God knows dating me is crazy enough."

Brandon laughed again, "You're a good kind of crazy, we will sort this out. "

"While I've got you, have you given any more thought on when we can see each other."

Brandon responded, "I was thinking I'd come down Thanksgiving night and stay until Sunday, does that work for you?"

On the other end, Sarah grinned, "I wish it was longer but, but I'll take what I can get. My parents and siblings are looking forward to meeting you. Daddy says that you can stay with us, in the guest room of course."

Brandon laughed again, "That sounds good. I'd love to talk longer but if I'm going to talk to my principal, I probably need to do it before the end of lunch."

"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."

Being able to work with his players for the next 2 hours helped Brandon calm down and relax. After they left, he squeezed in a workout of his own with one of his assistants and then headed home. After he prepped dinner and ate while watching the evening news, he picked up his phone and called Sarah.

After three rings, she picked up, "Hi, are you okay?"

After a pause, he said, "Hey, I've been better for sure. How are you?"

"I'm okay, there are a lot of questions coming in, lots of requests for comments. We are handling it though, how are you."

Over the next five minutes Brandon vented about his day, all of the issues and how he blew up at his class. Sarah let him talk, occasionally saying things to let Brandon know that she was listening. Finally Brandon stopped and said, "Sorry I unloaded like that."

"No, no, don't apologize, you have this situation rougher than I do, I just want to help in any way I can. Would it be easier if we just stopped us? I would totally..."

Before Sarah could continue, Brandon cut her off, "Stop that. I'm not going to let stupid people come between us. I knew this was going to eventually happen, maybe not so soon, but it was going to happen. We couldn't hide forever."

"Are you sure?"

"Positive, we are us, and that's between us. So what if people are constantly taking pictures, it just means I can't get fat and have to keep working out."

For the first time all day, Sarah laughed, and hearing Brandon laugh made her feel better about everything. They chatted a little bit more, and for the first time, Brandon said, "I miss you."

Sarah paused in what she was talking about and smiled before saying, "I miss you too, I can't wait until next week."

They continued talking for another half hour before Brandon showered, then they switched to zoom and talked for another hour and a half while watching 2 episodes of Fixer Upper on HGTV. Finally as they said goodbye, Sarah said, "10 Days then we see each other."

Brandon smiled, "I can't wait, it needs to hurry up."

Ch. 4-Tuesday

Brandon woke up to head to school like normal, as he was halfway there, his phone rang, displaying Morgan's name on the truck screen. "Hey, what's up?"

"You're in a lot better mood than I expected. Sarah said you had a pretty rough day yesterday."

"Yeah, it was pretty annoying, hopefully it'll even out, I just gotta make it to Friday then Thanksgiving break is here."

"Well that's good. Not that it means much, but sorry you're dealing with this."

As Brandon got ready to respond, he pulled into his spot and noticed the same two guys from the day before. "Morgan, hold up, I gotta deal with something." He rolled down his window, "Guys, I told you to leave me alone, if you don't leave, I'll call the security guards and have you escorted from campus."

"Come on man, can you just confirm it for us?"

"You're smart guys, figure it out."

The reporters got into their cars and left as Brandon went back to his call, "Okay, Sorry about that."

"No big deal, you handled that really well. I called to check on you and try to figure out when you were flying down?"

"Well right now, the plan is to fly down on Thanksgiving night and then back home Sunday. At least that's when I bought my tickets for. I bought the expensive ones so I can change them when I want."

"Oh...okay."

"Problem?"

Morgan paused for a second, then said, "No not a problem, I just thought you might come down and catch the final tour stop."

"Oh, I hadn't planned on it, Should I be?"

"I'm not trying to pressure you, I just know that the last few days have weighed on Sarah since the media identified you."

As Brandon walked into his classroom, he thought and said, "You know, let me talk to my parents about Thanksgiving, look at changing tickets, and I'll get back to you. Let's keep this quiet from Sarah, I wouldn't want to get her hopes up."

"Okay, that sounds good, maybe you can surprise her."

Brandon hung up the phone and prepped for his day. His first 4 periods were much more productive than the prior day, apparently his blowup with 6th period had gotten through to everyone. As he reached lunch, he found himself back in the lounge looking for new airline tickets. He called and talked to his dad, filling him in on the whole situation. His dad informed him of the plans for Thanksgiving and Brandon decided that he would just flop his vacation and fly to Mississippi on Friday after work, catch the show, get a hotel room so as not to intrude on Sarah's family, then fly back home, then drive home to Pennsylvania on Wednesday night.

When the day wound down, Brandon texted Morgan and filled her in on his plans. The closest flight he could find left Newark at 4:45 on Friday and landed in New Orleans at 6:55 central time. He would then have to rent a car and drive the hour and a half to Biloxi where the show was at the Coast Coliseum. If everything went according to plan, he would get to the show about 8:45, missing the beginning, but being there for the end. He would then fly back out of New Orleans on Wednesday afternoon, getting into Newark, then making the five hour drive to his childhood home in the northern part of the state.

Morgan texted back, "That is perfect! I'll get you a parking pass and get you credentials and have them left with the security guard in the back. Now I just have to keep this a secret from Sarah."

Ch. 5-Friday

Brandon made it through the rest of the week pretty well. There were still mumbling about him from the students but the reporters had seemingly died down. He did find himself checking websites that covered celebrities a couple times a day to see if there had been any other things that he needed to be aware of. Other than the local paper tying them together and that being picked up by TMZ as an update to their earlier story, things had pretty much been quiet. Now as Brandon wrapped up his day, he was focused on getting to Newark and getting to New Orleans so he could catch as much of the show as he could. After a quick change of clothes in the staff restroom, out the door he went.