The Singer and the Teacher

My dad barged into my room at six thirty, singing "It's a beautiful mooooooooorniiiiiiiiing!" before shaking me awake.

"Dad! What if I started sleeping naked? Do you have any idea how weird this would be?" I asked him in my gravelly voice.

"Well, then don't sleep naked," he said plainly, acting as if this should be the obvious answer. "There's coffee downstairs. Come on! Be excited, it's Thanksgiving! Justin is making you breakfast." I sat up after he left the room, continuing to be way too awake for this hour of the morning. I dug some slippers out of my suitcase and headed downstairs.

"Morning, Addy," said Justin from the kitchen, pushing a cup of coffee towards me. "I'm making a sausage, potato and eggs skillet thing. Mom's making gravy. Dad's making toast."

"Sweet," I said, taking the warm mug. He was one of the very few that knew exactly how I liked my coffee.

"How's San Fran treating you?" he asked, putting a lid on the pan.

"Pretty good," I said after taking a sip of my hot coffee. "I'm teaching at an all-girls prep school. It's way better than teaching high school."

"Nice," he said, nodding. "How's the uh, boyfriend?" I smiled widely at the mention of Derek. Justin would never outright ask about something like that.

"He's doing alright," I said, realizing that it would be after nine o'clock over there. "You guys will meet him after Christmas. I'm going to be in Florida this year."

"WHAT?!" shouted my dad, sliding on his socks over to the breakfast bar. "You're going to Florida for Christmas? You dog breath," he said, nudging my shoulder and smiling evilly.

"Honey! Don't yell, you're going to wake up the dogs," snapped my mom and he held up his hands.

"Yes, dear."

"Yeah, Derek invited me to spend Christmas with his family," I said, feeling the blush creep up on my cheeks. "It should be fun."

"It's going to warm and sunny," my dad pouted, making my mom snigger at him.

"Do you have anything cool planned for the rest of the school year?" Justin asked, removing the lid from the pan and adding the eggs.

"A field trip to Greece," I said, reminding myself to get updates from the students that were going. "I'm going to take ten of them on a tour for two weeks. I have a lot of connections over there, so I've been able to keep the cost low."

"Lucky," he said.

After breakfast and another cup of coffee, we went to our separate rooms and started getting ready to leave. I took the time to call Derek before I put on the Thanksgiving outfit I had planned out. He answered in less than two rings.

"Hey," he said, sounding relieved. "I didn't think you were going to call."

"It's only eight," I said, making him sigh.

"Right, I keep forgetting about that," he said, and a short silence passed. "One of my ex-girlfriends called me last night." Ah, so that's what was wrong.

"I'm sorry," I said. "If she makes you cry again, I'm going to make her wish her mother never made eyes at her father."

"It's not that," he said, and now it was my turn to be quiet. "She did something that I can't forgive her for. Not to me, but to someone I cared a lot about. She was the only girl I thought I was going to marry."

I didn't say anything. This wasn't what I wanted to hear about just before he headed back to Tallahassee. I could feel goose bumps on my upper arms and I stared blankly at my reflection in the mirrored closet doors.

"You mean more to me than she ever did," he said after a few seconds, and it sounded genuine, but he had already planted a seed of doubt in my mind. I had a feeling I knew this girl's name. "Will you say something?"

"You know, for once I don't have anything to say," I said, wondering why he was telling me this. I remembered Jenny's perfect face and how she acted like she knew Derek better than anyone else. There was an internal fight going on, and I knew I shouldn't say anything, but I couldn't help myself. "Is her name Jenny?" There was a deadly silence that was much quieter than any silence we'd ever shared.

"Jennifer. Yeah. How did you know?" he asked, his voice confused. He knew I wasn't the type to go and do background searches on all of his exes. I took a deep breath.

"The day you left San Francisco, this anonymous girl with blonde hair and perfect features came up to me as soon as you were out of sight and started telling me that you were hard to be with. And that she wanted to know why you loved me, but not in a nice way," I confessed, hoping that he wasn't going to explode on me. "Then she left. She made a point to say that I wasn't supposed to tell you because it would upset you."

"I wish you would've said something earlier," he said wryly. "That bitch is up to something." My eyebrows rose at the anger in his voice. I had never seen him get angry over anything but traffic, and I could tell this wasn't the type of anger you wanted directed towards you.

"Is there anything I can do?" I asked, and he paused for a little while before answering.

"Please talk to me before you jump to any conclusions," he said, and I nodded slowly. "If she flew all the way to San Francisco just to get a look at you that means she wants you gone. She's done things like this before, but she hasn't called me in two years."

"Okay," I said, and the tension between us was dissipating. "How has your Thanksgiving been so far? You're a lot closer to dinner time than I am."

Our conversation stayed away from Jenny, and by the time I hung up, things were back to normal except for the unnatural feeling of doubt. I knew that he would have lots of ex-girlfriends, but I didn't take into account that any of them may have meant something to him. I shook my head of those thoughts and replaced them with my favorite memories of Derek, and I must say, he looks just as good taking off his clothes in my head as he does in real life.

* * *

It was so good to be home. Roadies were unpacking our bus and putting all of our equipment back into our practice area. Alex had gone straight to his girlfriend's hospital, Jeremy wanted to sleep in a real bed, Jake needed a coffee and Brooks was busy making sure his guitar made it safely back into his hands. I was busy looking for Adriene on Twitter. She thought it would be a fun game to let me check every single Adriene McNair on the entire site before I was able to follow her. I was about to tweet to all of my tens of thousands of followers that whoever found my girlfriend on Twitter and reported her username to me would earn themselves a phone call when an alert told me that I had a message.

Hey there, sexy. It was from the same girl that had been bothering me for months. She called herself Amber Lynn McDonald as if she thought someone would believe I wrote "Amber Lynn" for her. I ignored it and was finishing my tweet when I got another message.

Still trying to figure out who I am, agóri tragoudistí̱s? You have got to be kidding.

Adriene? I wrote back, half hoping that it wasn't her because of how badly I thought of the person with that username.

Duh. My full name is Adriene Lyra McNair. Amber Lynn McDonald. I thought you'd have figured it out by now. I gave you loads of hints. Instead of believing whoever this was, I called Adriene's number. She was laughing so hard when she answered her phone that when she inhaled for air, she squeaked.

"You are evil," I said flatly, and that only made her laugh even harder.

"You beautiful, perfect man," she said, gasping for breath. Even in the light of the compliment, I still had to smile. "Now I'll change my name back and you have my permission to tell your followers who I am."

"Maybe I want you all to myself," I said, unable to stop grinning now.

"After you tweeted, "There's this girl in San Francisco that I love and I can't wait to come home to her one day"? I don't want to sound cocky, but I gained about three hundred followers that day," she told me, and I laughed at her.

"Okay, we're done talking about Twitter," I said. "I'm picking you up from the airport on Wednesday, you meet my immediate family, and then you get to go to a Sanders family reunion on Thursday. Friday is Christmas Eve and we're spending that with my mom's side of the family, and Christmas Day is with my dad's. Are you ready to look beautiful for that long?"

"Derek, we've gone over this plan a hundred times," she said, and I heard the buzzer for her dryer go off. "As of right now, all of my dresses are clean. Trust me; I want to impress your parents as much as you want to impress mine."

"I know, I'm getting nervous," I said, already feeling my insides wanting to spill out all over the floor and it was only Saturday. "I have to go meet my cousin Danielle at Starbucks or she'll kill me. She wants to hear all about you before you come here."

"Alright, have fun, my agóri tragoudistí̱s," she said, making my cheeks hurt from smiling so much. We said our goodbyes and I sped to where I was meeting Danielle. I hadn't seen her for a couple of months before I went on tour, and we were too close for that to be acceptable. She was already sitting down at our table with two coffees and waved to me excitedly.

"So? Spill the beans, dude," she said, moving her straightened bangs out of her face. I told her everything. She had a happy smile on her face, hearing me talk about Adriene, taking drinks of her coffee every now and again.

"She sounds perfect for you," she said after a good half an hour. "She's not like Pilar, who treated you more like a trophy than anything. I still can't believe you proposed to her."

"Yeah, me either."

"She's not like Jennifer either," said Danielle carefully, and waited for my reaction before continuing. I didn't say anything, but I didn't want her to feel bad for mentioning her. "You never saw it, but she was the most selfish person I've ever met. I'm here to tell you how it is, Derek, even if it still hurts after all this time. Jennifer loved you, but she didn't care about you, if that makes any sense. I've seen her lurking around the places you two used to hang out. She thinks we can't see her, but she's watching us right now." By instinct I turned around, looking carefully for that blonde hair.

"I should send you to live with Adriene until I get to the bottom of this," I said, feeling like those blue eyes were stabbing me in the back like they did a couple of years ago.

"Don't worry about it," said Danielle, finishing off her coffee. "She should keep her distance. I only had to pin her to the ground once and now she's afraid of me."

"You are a blessing from Zeus himself," I said, giving her a hug before we went our separate ways. When I started my car, I saw her. She was standing on the sidewalk across the street, wearing jean shorts and a tank top, her hair cut differently and skinnier than I remembered her. For a split second, I was going to get out of my car and run to her. The sun was shining on my chest and the locket Adriene gave me flashed in my eye and I rolled up my window and drove away. I didn't look back and I didn't want to.