Richest Man: It All Started With My Rebate System-Chapter 65: The Get Together (2)

Steven pushed through the entrance and the warmth of the place hit him immediately.

The bar and grill was exactly what Callum had described and nothing more than that, which was a recommendation in itself. Dark wood, exposed brick, the sound of conversation layered over a music track that was present without demanding attention. The lighting was warm and low without being theatrical.

Steven scanned the room and found his friends’ position almost immediately.

They had pushed two tables together near the far wall, away from the bar crowd, and the group was already assembled and mid-conversation. He counted eight people before James looked up.

James stood up before Steven had taken three steps toward the table.

"There he is," James said, loud enough that the table turned as one.

What followed was the chaos of a group of people who had not been in the same room for years and were suddenly in the same room. Steven was pulled into it before he had fully arrived at the table — a handshake from James that turned into a brief embrace, Callum standing and gripping his shoulder, Priya saying something he couldn’t quite hear over the noise but that was clearly warm, Marcus extending a hand across the table with a wide grin.

He made his way around the table, taking each greeting as it came, names and faces clicking into place with varying speeds. Some were immediate. Some required a second or two of internal calibration before the name arrived.

By the time he sat down, the table had already moved back into conversation and he had been absorbed into it without ceremony.

A server appeared and Steven ordered a drink without looking at the menu.

"Right," James said, turning to Steven. "Talk."

"Where do you want me to start?" Steven said.

"The beginning would be conventional," Callum said, from the other side of the table.

Steven smiled, realising that Callum had barely changed. Same flat delivery, same expression that gave nothing away until he decided to let something through. Two years had done nothing to it.

"The phone," Priya said. "Hannah told me. You lost everything."

"Everything," Steven confirmed. "Contacts, photos, all of it. A week after my mother’s funeral."

The table went quiet for a moment, as everyone that what Steven had said deserved a moment. Losing something of extreme importance right after a major tragedy was something very terrible.

"That’s brutal timing," Marcus said. 𝕗𝕣𝐞𝐞𝘄𝐞𝚋𝚗𝗼𝘃𝗲𝗹.𝚌𝕠𝚖

"It was," Steven said. "And then life moved and I got buried in it and the longer it went, the harder it felt to explain. It’s not a good reason. It’s just the reason."

James nodded slowly. "I’ll accept it on behalf of everyone." He looked around the table. "Anyone who doesn’t accept it can say so now."

Nobody said so.

"Good," James said. "Now tell us everything else."

"Not yet," Steven said. "I want to hear from everyone first. I’ve been off the grid for two years. You all have a head start on me."

There was a brief exchange of glances around the table, as they all were genuinely unsure who should go first.

Priya decided to be first to go, as she spoke.

"I’ll go," she said. "It’s my third year at Rice. Biochemistry. Which sounds impressive until you’re in a lab at eleven at night trying to explain to yourself why you thought this was a good idea."

"It was a good idea," Callum said. "You were always going to end up in a lab."

"That’s a very kind framing of what is currently a very difficult degree," she said.

Everyone at the table laughed.

"I’m doing fine though," she added, more genuinely. "I like it. I just complain about it."

James went next without being asked. "Graduate program. UT Austin. Communications, which everyone in my family continues to believe is not a real subject." He spread his hands. "I keep showing them my grades. They keep asking when I’m going to study something useful. We have reached an impasse."

"It’s a real subject," Steven said.

"Thank you," James said, pointing at him. "Someone finally."

Marcus was working at a logistics company in the Galleria area, had been there for fourteen months, and described it with the tone of someone who was grateful for the stability and aware that it wasn’t permanent.

"It pays well enough and I’m learning how the actual world works, which nobody tells you is different from how school tells you it works."

"That’s the realest thing anyone has said tonight," Callum said.

Sasha was studying nursing at HBU, two years in, one clinical placement already completed. She spoke about it with a directness that made it clear she had found her direction and didn’t have much patience for the parts of the journey that were getting in the way of it.

"The placement was the first time it made sense. Before that it was a lot of memorising things and hoping they’d eventually connect," she said.

A woman named Dani, who Steven had needed a moment to place and then remembered clearly once her laugh arrived, was working at a marketing firm downtown. She had started as an intern and been taken on full-time six months in. "It’s fast and slightly chaotic and I like it more than I expected to."

Another member of the group, Olu, was between things. He said it straightforwardly and without the self-consciousness that the phrase sometimes carried. He had left a construction management role three months ago, had something lined up for the following month, and was using the time in between to visit his family in Lagos. "Which everyone treats like I’m in crisis. I’m not in crisis. I just made a decision."

"You’re not in crisis," James confirmed. "You’re between things. There’s a difference."

Olu pointed at him. "Exactly."

Callum, predictably, had given the least information with the most words. He was doing a part time course in computer science while working tech support at a firm in Midtown. The firm was fine. The course was fine. He wasn’t sure yet what the combination was building toward, but he was in no particular hurry to find out. "I figure if I stay curious long enough, the direction will become obvious. Or it won’t and I’ll adjust."

"That’s either very wise or you’re just winging it," Priya said.

"Both," Callum said.

"Same," Steven said.

They looked at each other across the table, understanding each other without requiring much explanation.