Sweet Caroline

#16 Just a fling

"Right." He turns the doorknob, answering my unspoken question with such a simple gesture. "Sorry."

I don't even get the chance to say anything else. He just steps out of my apartment and slams the door shut behind him. Like an idiot, I stand there in the hallway, praying he'll come back. I'm still not sure what I want, but I think I deserve a proper conversation at the very least. After a few minutes, I realize that since he doesn't have his key anymore, he can't just come in whenever he wants to. What if he's still out there?

I open the door ever so slightly, but he's gone. I don't see his car either, so he's not sitting around waiting for me to peek into the street. Of course not. It was stupid of me to think that he'd be.

With a sigh, I call Shaughna. She picks up immediately and gasps at all the right moments, cursing along with me when I tell her that it's over between us.

"That man is a dickhead if he's ready to walk out of your life like that," she tells me fiercely. "What the fuck. He's ancient and you gave him the best two months of his sorry little life. The best sex of his life, too. And now he's just walking away? What the fuck."

I can't help but smile. "That's not exactly what happened. It's for the best, to be honest. We agreed that we were just having fun. It was never meant to be more than sex. I just got caught up in the whole thing. I don't even really know him."

"You're just clouded by the mind-blowing orgasms," she agreed with a teasing tone. "What's his name again?"

"Nathan."

"No, his full name," she pushes.

"Nathanial Storm."

She's quiet for a moment and I frown, wondering what she's up to. Why would she need his... oh no, she googling the shit out of him right now, isn't she? I hear Shaughna gasp and I know I'm right.

"Wow, he is one hot daddy," she breathes. "Jesus fucking Christ, I'd totally do him. He can't be 41, Caroline. Are you sure he's not Rose's dad's younger brother or something?"

I laugh. "You found a picture of him?" I wonder what exactly Shaughna is looking at, but I know that Nathan never wanted us to look each other up. He knew my last name the whole time, yet he never googled me, or he'd have found out I was teaching his daughter. It feels wrong to break his trust now, to look him up like I normally would when I meet a guy.

"Oh no," she says, her voice changing completely. "Caroline... I think you may have dodged a bullet with this guy. I think you should look him up. Right now."

"Why?" All I want to do right now is watch Grey's Anatomy, have good cry and eat some ice cream before I go to bed. Tomorrow, I need to teach again. Teach Rose. Oh God. I really don't want to spend the night googling Nathan. What good would that do?

"I'm looking at his mug shots right now," Shaughna says and I hear her fingers moving over the keyboard of her laptop. "Holy shit, Caroline. You had sex with a murderer."

"What?!" Okay, maybe I do need to look him up. Shaughna is a dramatic girl, so I can't just take her word for it. I put her on speaker and get my laptop, pulling it open on my lap as I sit down on the couch.

Nathanial Storm, I type, my heartbeat already speeding up. The first thing I see is a website for a realtor firm with a picture of him with two other men and a woman, all looking striking in their high-end clothes. So, he sells homes for a living. Yeah, I can see that. From the looks of the website, he's in the higher segment, which explains the suits.

There are a few more hits for his social media accounts, although it doesn't seem like he spends a lot of time on there. He has an Instagram account with only one post, showing a picture of an empty beach. His Facebook looks like it hasn't been used in years and his Twitter is just sad. A few retweets, nothing else. I click on images and see a few pics of him with a very young Rose and a smiling Elise, which are on Elise's socials. She evidently didn't take down any pictures that she posted before the divorce.