The minute I get home, I just know that he has to come over at some point tonight. Surely he is just as freaked out by this as I am. Maybe even more, judging by how totally obvious he was being at the school. At least I saved our asses by acting like he hasn't been inside of me more times than I can count. Well... I can count, since I have a box of condoms underneath my bed that can tell me exactly how many times, but... that really isn't important right now.
I still can't believe the mess I'm in. Tiffany warned me about this. The school does not want teachers and parents fraternizing and I've been doing exactly that. And more. So much more. I am still on my first contract, only two months into the job. If anyone finds out, I won't get my contract renewed for next year and that would suck ass. I love it here. So much. I love my colleagues, my apartment, the kids... How the hell is this gonna look on my resume? When my next employer calls the headmaster for a reference, he'll surely tell him about me hooking up with the father of one of my kids – one who is seventeen years older than I am, no less. Crap, crap, crap. I am screwed.
Don't freak out, I tell myself sternly. No one knows. No one has to know. Maybe no one will ever find out and I can just stay where I am. I didn't tell anyone. Nathan didn't tell anyone, I think. No one knows.
I'm worried about my job more than anything, but a part of me is already freaking out about having to break things off with Nathan. I don't want to, I really don't, but I can't afford lose my job. And now that I know who his daughter is, now that I've met his ex-wife... Yeah, things just got personal. Either we go for it for real or we never see each other again, except for parent-teacher conferences. We can't go on fucking, pretending like sex doesn't affect other aspects of our lives. As of now, it does.
I'm not even sure what I want to do. I never truly thought that dating Nathan for real was an option, since he made it perfectly clear that I was just a distraction and that he's not looking for a stepmother for Rose. I feel in no way ready to be a parental figure. Begin a teacher is quite different from being a parent and it's only my third year after I got my teaching degree. Hell, the third year barely even started. I'm perfectly happy teaching Rose, but being anything else to her scares the shit out of me. Then again... it's not like I have to marry Nathan tomorrow. We can take things slow and if things don't work out, we can break up before I ever get close to being anything else than a teacher to Rose.
It is a classic struggle. What do you listen to? Brain or heart? Or vagina? My vagina knows what she wants: Nathan, all day, every day. My brain decided earlier tonight to cut things off with him and focus on my job. So that meant my heart is the tiebreaker. Too bad my heart is a fickle thing that doesn't know what the hell it wants. I like Nathan and if I'm completely honest, I like him a lot more than I should, but am I ready to put my brand-new life on the line for him?
After an hour of pacing through my apartment, I suddenly realize that he might not come over. Maybe he already decided that this whole thing is doomed, and he isn't even going to talk to me about it face-to-face. I grunt and take out my phone. No messages.
I call him, but he doesn't pick up, so I send him a quick message: When are you getting here?
I can see he's online, but he's not replying. Crap. I know I should play it cool, but nothing about me has ever been even remotely cool. Why start now?
Come over, I tell him, trying to ignore my heartbeat speeding up.
His response is short: Are you sure?
Yes, I shoot back. Yes, yes, yes.
Okay, one yes would have done the trick as well, but like I said, I am not cool. I want him in my apartment right now so we can figure out this whole mess. I need to know where he stands in order to figure out what I want.
About five seconds after I told him to come over, I already hear his key in the door. I hurry to the door and stare at him like I'm seeing him for the first time. How the hell did I not know he was Rose's father before tonight? They have the same piercing green eyes and her long hair is the exact same shade of brown. She's got Elise's delicate features, but she is undeniably his daughter.
"That was quick," I comment, not knowing what else to say.
He grunts. "I've been here for an hour. I just sat in my car, not sure if I should come in or just push your key through the mailbox and get the hell away from you."
"Oh." That's both sweet and horrible. "I'm glad you decided to come in."
Nathan sighs and leans against the wall, looking absolutely exhausted. "How the hell did you keep it together, Caroline? You were so utterly composed and professional tonight. Did you know?"
"Of course not!" How could he even think that? "I just did what I had to do. You were acting like an idiot. Did you know?"
He snorted and almost smiled. "Yeah, of course, that's why I acted like I saw a ghost."
"You knew my last name, Nathan!" I'm raising my voice, but I don't give a damn. I need some of this tension to leave my body. "How the hell did you not make the connection?"
"I know at least twenty people named Collins. Besides, you're 24."
"So? What the hell does my age have to do with anything?"
Nathan grunts again and pushes himself off the wall. "When I was 24, I was still in college, being a drunk idiot. I was a mess back then. I think it took me until my thirties to get myself together. How the hell are you this grown-up at your age?"
I roll my eyes at him, but I feel proud that he sees me that way. "Don't exaggerate, Nathan. I finished high school at 18, went to college for four years and started work right away. So yeah, it's my third year of teaching. I'll be 25 in January."
He shakes his head. "That's... I seriously didn't think about that for even a second. In my mind, all 24-years-olds are waitresses or... I don't know, just doing what they have to do to put themselves through college." His eyes focus on me for the first time since he walked in. "I don't even know why I'm surprised. I knew from the moment I met you that you were different."
"Really?" I scoff, finding that hard to believe. "You saw a girl in a wet sundress with her bra shining through and you thought: wow, she's pretty damn adult for a girl in her twenties?"
He laughs along with me. "Okay, fine, I just thought you were hot and tried my best you get you into bed. I did realize you were different pretty damn soon, though. I mean... we both know that we should have ended this thing after the first week."
"Do we?" I take a deep breath, trying to be brave. "I'm not so sure."
He shakes his head and holds out his key for me to take. I don't take it, so we just stand there, looking at each other like idiots. When he realizes I'm not moving even an inch, he puts the key on the side table and moves towards the front door.
"I'm sorry I put you in this position," he says, sounding defeated. "I'll make sure never to do anything that puts your job in jeopardy ever again."
"Nathan..." My voice makes him pause, his back still to me and his hand on the doorknob. "Don't you think that this should be my decision? Since I'm the one who'll get in trouble, I think it would be nice if you actually asked me what I make of all of this."
His shoulders tense. "I won't let you put your job on the line for a fling."
A fling? Is that really all this is for him? "No," I agree, trying to stay strong. "If this is just a fling, I won't put my life on hold for that. You're right. I need more than just sex to decide to risk everything."
"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.
Finally, I see what Shaughna is talking about. The guy in the mugshots is definitely Nathan, but he's way younger than he is now. In fact, I'd say he's in his teens there. 18 or 19 maybe? I click on a picture and go right to the website, scanning the article.
"He's not a murderer!" I tell Shaughna, a little annoyed that she made me think that. "It just says that he was accused of attempt at murder, but he got charged in court with assault. That's not murder!"
"Carline, do you even hear yourself right now?" She sounded exasperated. "I know the guy is some kind of sex god and that you like it when he smacks your ass, but from what I'm seeing here, he beat a guy into a pulp. How's that okay?"
"He was 18," I read, scrolling through another page. "Oh my God, he got jail time!" I can't believe what I'm reading. Nathan was in jail for two years and got out when he was 20. For assault. What the hell?
"Run away," Shaughna tells me, not even kidding. "You've got your key back, right? Maybe you should change the locks just in case he made copies. Don't take chances with this guy."
"I don't believe that he'd ever hurt me." Well, not outside of the bedroom. The trust I felt from the start is still there. Maybe that's stupid, but I can't help it. "From what I'm reading so far, he beat up a guy that sexually harassed his sister and he got carried away." That isn't something to be proud of, but I don't think that makes him a bad person.
"To get put away for two years at the age of 18, you have to do a lot more than get carried away," Shaughna insists. "And it says that there was never any proof that the guy harassed his sister. That's just what Nathanial told the press."
"Nathan is not a liar." I feel really sure about this. Then again, he had hit the wall and thrown stuff when his mother was in the hospital. He'd told me so himself. Just because he didn't get violent with me, didn't mean he was a good guy. And he did get violent with me. Not in a bad way, but still... Should I read anything into this?
"Guess we now know how he got to know his way around handcuffs," Shaughna scoffs. "He's lucky that he's so old. If he was born 20 years later like us, there'd be pictures and videos of his arrest everywhere. At least with him it's just mugshots and articles. The guy is old, Caroline."
"It doesn't matter," I decide. "He made it perfectly clear that this was all just about sex for him. He called it a fling. He gave back his key. We only met two months ago. Surely it won't be that hard for me to move on. I'll just pretend this whole thing never happened."
Of course, that is easier said than done. I spend the whole night reading everything there is about Nathan. From what I can tell, he got arrested for beating up a 30-year-old guy who had been dating his sister. There is a statement by Nathanial where he said that he didn't regret it one bit, because the guy had tried to rape his sister, but like Shaughna said, there was no proof that was true. Still, I instantly believe it. Why would he lie about it? Why would he beat up a random guy? I don't know Nathan inside and out, but I know enough to be certain that he's not a murderer or someone who beats up people for no reason. He must have had a reason.
Not that it matters. He's nothing to me.
***
Getting through the week is hell. I honestly don't know how I do it. The kids surely notice, but they seem too scared that I'll go off on them to act up. They are so quiet that I wonder a few times if they lost their tongues. On Friday I just stay in the entire day, staying in bed and googling Nathan again, rereading everything there is on him – which is, to be fair, only three old newspaper articles, since he's not a serial killer or anything – and fighting the urge to call him.
When it gets dark out and I'm throwing together some dinner without much inspiration, I decide that I need to stop moping around. I had two months of great sex and it ended way later than it should have. I didn't break up with anyone – this isn't at all like what happened with me and Danny. I was just sleeping with someone and we decided that the sex wasn't worth me losing my job over. A smart move. I should be grateful that Nathan had made the right call. And right now, I needed to do the right thing. Which was to call Tiffany and go dancing tonight.
"What if someone sees us?" she says when I propose the idea, worried about what any parents might think. If she knew what I'd done with Rose's dad, she'd freak.
"I just wanna dance," I tell her, hoping she'll say yes. I could ask Shaughna, but it's already ten and she's three hours away. "I don't even need alcohol. I'll drive and we'll go one town over. No one will see us there. You can let loose. You need this too, Tiff."
"Okay," she decides, sounding excited already. "Pick me up in fifteen."
That's how we end up in a shitty bar two towns over. We're too early for it to be busy, but we don't mind. Tiffany drinks so much that I just hope she won't pass out in an hour and I am so ready to cut loose that I don't need alcohol to fuel me. We both jump around like idiots, picking the most awful songs on the jukebox. A lot of people are watching us, but we don't care. When the only club in the town finally opens at midnight, we make our way there and dance our troubles away. Tiffany meets a guy and starts grinding on him and I lose her for a while, but I make sure to find her and stop her from doing something she might regret. She is far too drunk to make rational decisions. I make sure to get the guy's number in case she wants to see him again, but I don't think she will. I doubt she'll ever remember him, to be honest.
Tiffany ends up passed out on my couch, and I go to bed feeling a little better. I didn't get drunk, I didn't hook up with anyone, yet I still got my mind off Nathan for a while. It's a goodnight, all in all.