Max and Nathan, 5 PM
It wasn’t like Nathan had searched out Cherry’s boyfriend. No seriously, they just sort of ended up standing next to each other near the bar, and then Nathan had realized who he was standing next to and gotten curious. Not weird curious, but he’d heard enough about him to garner some kind of curiosity. He glanced sideways at Max, then made the decision to introduce himself.
“Hey,” he said with an automatic smile, relaxing his shoulders. “You’re Max, right? I’m Nathan.” And lord, he only thought about what Cherry might have said to Max for a second before it was out of his head again. It wasn’t like it had been a real thing. It obviously hadn’t done much to hurt his friendship with her. “I’m friends with your girl, Cherry. Funny that we ain’t really met before.” Not that Nathan was a perfect judge of character, but Max seemed like the kind of guy he would have been bros with back in the day.
Max looked up, up, and up some more until he found Nathan’s face. Dang, this guy was tall as hell. He stared at Nathan for a moment, sort of stunned and taken aback that the man had introduced himself. What do you say to the guy that that flirted with your girlfriend right under your nose? A guy that was, in Max’s estimation, way more handsome than any dude had any business in being?
“Uh…” Max replied dumbly, blinking at Nathan for a moment as he tried to come up with something slightly more eloquent. “Hi. Yes, I’m Max. And you are Nathan.” That wasn’t conversation. That was just repeating Nathan’s own words back to him. He knew he needed to say something else but it was hard to come up with something original when all Max could think about was how close Nathan had held his girlfriend on Halloween. The image was burned into his brain for all eternity and he shook his head to try and rid the upsetting visual from his mind’s eye. Nope, still there.
“Uh yeah, I guess it is sort of weird we haven’t met before now, seeing as we’ve been at a bunch of the same parties.” It was as close as Max would venture to mentioning the whole Halloween situation. Just because he was still a little hung up on it didn’t mean he was looking to make Nathan feel uncomfortable. If he was being honest with himself, Max really couldn’t blame the other guy for recognizing perfection when he saw it. He might even go as far as to question any lady-leaning individual's taste and intelligence if they hadn’t been blown away by how amazing Cherry was. So, even though standing next to this sort of specimen made him feel more inadequate than ever, he was determined to be himself and not some gross, jealous douchenozzle.
“Looks like you need a refill,” Max said, gesturing to Nathan’s empty glass. “What will it be? My treat.”
That was a baller move, right? It totally made it seem like he was cool and easygoing and not at all resentful that his new acquaintance looked like a Disney prince.
“You really don’t gotta do that, man,” Nathan objected out of habit. He hadn’t introduced himself so that Max could buy him a drink. But he backpedaled pretty quickly away from his objection. “But if you’re real serious about it, it was just a beer.” He grinned and shrugged like he knew that was a pretty bland choice.
“I did the moonshine a couple of a times, and damn, I’ve got a great tolerance but that stuff just about set me on my ass.” Nathan pushed a hand through his hair. “Don’t reckon I need to get myself into more trouble tonight by strayin’ from the tried and true.” At least he didn’t think he winced outwardly at the mention of getting into trouble. Hadn’t that almost been what Halloween was? He didn’t make a habit of trying to go after unavailable women, but he’d been just drunk enough to think that it might’ve been a good idea.