Chapter 5: Days Of The Past

Nathan went to the private room where he was going to meet his long-time friend, Maverick. As soon as he reached the location, he was overwhelmed by a crowd of prostitutes settling in the room. He cut into the mob and was greeted by lascivious and thirsty comments from the women who were surrounding Maverick.

“Hey, handsome!” A slut in a skimpy body-con suit squeaked wantonly.

“Oh, who do we have here? Another daddy!” Another woman came forward, circling her arm to his.

Immediately, he gave her an alarming gaze. “Get off me.”

The woman obediently untangled her arms to him, stepping away from Nathan as he approached Maverick. By the time Maverick had noticed his friend coming forward, he stood from his seat and welcomed him with a partial bear hug. Nathan accepted his gesture and patted his back.

“Good to see you, bro!” Maverick said when he parted. “It’s been a long time! What’s up?!” He asked, giving him a bottle of beer.

Nathan sat across from Maverick. He took a swig of the beer and replied, “I’m good! Been better—” Then he paused for a while as he peered around the room. He felt unsettled with a horde of girls watching them like they were feasts to be gobbled in. With his cold mercurial gaze, his lips clenched into a straight line. “Can all of you get out of the room? You circling around us feels so unsettling.”

Maverick laughed at his comment. “Chill up, Nathan. These ladies just want to have some fun with us.” He then grabbed a piece of food from the table and ate it. While chewing, he smacked one of the woman’s asses lewdly. “Sweet pea, get out with your friends for a minute outside. I’ll be back with you later.”

The red-haired woman gave her a saccharine smile. “Okay, sure, babe.” She pecked Maverick’s lips first before heading out of the room with his ladies.

Maverick and Nathan were left inside the area as soon as all of Maverick’s sluts went out to get the two boys some privacy. Chugging his beer, Nathan was the first one to crack the silence between them.

“So, how have you been doing? The last time I heard from you was that you were getting married. Finally decided to settle down?”

Maverick leaned his arms on the back of the seat and gave him a wolfish smirk. “You know I don’t do that shit, bro.” He lifted his feet up on the ground and propped them onto his other legs. “Didn’t happen. I bailed out on the ceremony.”

Nathan wasn’t that shocked to know about it. Since their university days, Maverick had been the asshole in their group. He had been in and out of the jail for petty violations and was in numerous fights because he had hurt some brother’s or friend’s girl. His friend hadn’t changed a bit even after six years of being away here and going to the States to take over his brother’s failing business.

It was Nathan’s idea to take hold of the management of their offshore businesses since their global sales and accounts had been drastically down after that shocking incident. The stock market plummeted significantly and Nathan’s only choice was to manage their international accounts after what happened. 

“You’re still a pussy, Maverick.” Nathan chuckled and swashed the cold beer in his hand. “Goddamn dude, you’ve broken again another poor girl’s heart,” he stated lightly, but with a slight intention of shoving the truth down on him.

Maverick raised his arms in the mid-air. “You know me, Nathan. I’m a fucking too exceptional for that shit.” He deeply laughed as he dropped his arms back to the armchair and continued, “Anyway, enough about me. I haven't heard anything about you since you left, man. How’s it going?”

“It’s alright. After our accounts internationally became stable, I decided to return here and focus on expanding a new product line to a new market,” Nathan replied with his usual business and acumen tone.

Maverick rolled his eyes as he grumbled. “Ugh, that’s boring, dude. Haven’t you had any fun for the last six years you're away?”

“You know I can’t afford to have that Maverick after what happened…” Maverick placed his empty beer bottle on the glass table and reclined his arms on the elbow chair. Crumpling his fingers into a clench, he added. “I have to fix my own shit.”

“Nah, bro, it isn’t. It was an accident, alright?” He threw him another beer bottle and lightly cheered him up. “Don’t beat yourself innit, wimp.”

Nathan just gave him a smirk as he opened the beer with his teeth, throwing the cap to the side. As the alcohol seeped down into his system, he couldn’t shrug out what happened six years ago when his life turned considerably at three-sixty degrees. It was in his last days in college when he heard the devastating news about his brother and his wife from an employee in their offshore division. His brother, along with his wife, was involved in a drunk-driving accident that took their lives instantly. With Nathan being their only relative, he was informed by the hospital regarding this appalling, unfortunate event.

Having no choice and extremely worried about his brother, Nathan hastily drove to the airport when suddenly an accident clashed with him. He ran over to a woman crossing the bridge and was gotten injured by the impact that she had passed out on the road. However, since he didn’t have enough time to heed her, he kept driving along with the conscience he bore until he reached the airport. Because of this, Nathan called Maverick to ask for his help and told his friend that he would give the woman a part of his shares in the corporation for the awful thing he did.

In response, Maverick agreed to him and took care of everything else as Nathan boarded the plane. To his dismay, the moment he reached the hospital, his brother and his wife succumbed to the blow of the incident and were declared dead on arrival. Since that day, everything that he had ignored in life came down to him, whacking him with an enormous responsibility to his brother’s son, the company, and the debt that he inherited from his brother.

“So, how’s your nephew? He’s what? Already six or seven?” Maverick abruptly asked.

Nathan’s perusing was interrupted when he heard Maverick’s question. He chugged his beer first before reverting to him. “He’s going seven. The boy’s a damn clone of my brother.”

After her brother died, Chuck, his brother’s son, was left in his care. He didn't know how to approach or get along with Chuck at first. The boy had had enough trauma at an early age that it was too hard for Nathan to form a bond with him. 

“Is he with you when you came back?”

Nathan nodded. “Yeah, I just actually got him a tutor a while ago. I don’t want him to end up like you, dickhead.” He chuckled, throwing him jokingly into a piece of nuts.

Maverick just shrugged his friendly chides like good-old times. Nathan had been his long-time friend, and they had been through the worst of times. He knew that Nathan blamed himself for his brother's accident, that he had been too distant from the grandeur and beauty of life and had been buried with his responsibilities and work. 

“Your nephew must have been spoiled then,” Maverick commented, deviating him from his insults.

Nathan sighed heavily. “I guess so? Shit, I don’t know. I hadn’t babysat a child in my life, lest to take care of one.”  

In fact, Chuck Kelly, his nephew, had been spoiled so much that he didn’t know how to tell it to the kid or scold him for his appalling behavior. Nathan had stayed with Chuck for six years and managed the entire business by himself with no help from others. It was then when he became so invested with their off-shore accounts and transactions that he discovered the cause of his brother’s accident.

Nathan had learned that it was not really an accident, but an intended murder by their closest competitor. Hence, when Chuck turned four years old, he sent him to an elite school two years ago for safety, while Nathan stayed abroad to fix the business affairs and find out who was the perpetrator of the crash.

“Can’t disagree with you on that, bro.” He chortled and added, “You can't even handle a woman!”

Nathan just shook his head casually. He then shifted the topic to the woman Nathan had run over six years ago. “Speaking of the devil, do you have any news about the woman I’ve run into six years ago?”

Maverick’s face relaxed expression changed immediately to a galling sneer. “Don’t worry about it, bro. She’s doing fine.”

However, Maverick didn’t tell him it was his ex-fiancée, Daphne, who would be the tutor to Nathan’s nephew, Chuck Kelly.

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