238 :

"Golden Son?" His mother repeated in puzzlement.

"Yes, he seems the twittersphere took upon themselves to give me a nickname." He said bitterly, giving his phone to his mother.

"Nathaniel, those numbers…" Mary began, stunned speechless by the huge numbers of tweets talking about it.

"I know, it's already too big to ignore it or to try to stop it." Nathaniel added.

"Why don't you look more happy, Sweety? People love you enough to give you a nickname as flattering as this one, you should be more thrilled about this." Karine asked.

"I'm already high profiled as it is but now because of this, every journalist, pseudo journalist or just the first moron with a blog are going to take my life apart to find some dirt on me and when they failed, they are either going to invent something on me or simply go after you or grandpa and grandma in an effort to discredit me. America loves nothing more than to create heroes and then bring them down. I'm not even mentioning the different personalities who are going to go after me in an effort to clout chase and just thinking about it, I'm already annoyed."

"This is the ransom of success, sweety. You need to learn to live with it if you want to continue in this line of work."

"I know mom, I know. Sorry for that, I just had a really bad day today." He apologized with a tiny smile.

"It happens sometimes, you don't have to apologize to us, sweety." Karine said with a loving smile, patting his hair.

For a moment, he closed his eyes and enjoyed the moment with his loved ones feeling some stress ebbing away.

"Tell me, how grandpa and grandma reacted when they saw what happened to me?"

Nathaniel waited for an answer but when none came forth, he opened his eyes again to see his mothers looking at each other with apprehension.

"That bad, huh?" He shook his head.

"Yes, they were not actually pleased with the situation. I believe you can understand that." Mary said with caution in her voice.

"I see. I'm going to call them." He sighed.

Taking back his phone, Nathaniel was going to dial their numbers when he got an incoming call coming from Maggie.

"What's up shitface? Me, I'm so happy today, I can seem to stop smiling since I saw you get punched by a frat guy on national television." Maggie exclaimed gleefully.

"Hi Maggie, I'm glad that one of us is happy about the situation." He laughed.

"Come on, don't be a sore loser. Is it painful at least?"

"Yeah, it really is."

"That's music to my ears and I'm not talking about the garbage you make, I'm talking about good and real music." She added.

"Are you calling me for a reason or is it just to gloat to my face? Because if it is, I'm busy right now and so I'm going to hang up."

"Don't hang up, I'm done! I'm calling to tell you to post something on social media, your fans are going crazy right now. Post a picture of your face with it, the worst you look, the better. You have been busy today, next time, give me a head's up."

"Yeah, I wasn't expecting that all of it was going to happen today." He answered bitterly.

"Try harder next time. In the meantimes, you have an interview with CNN in ten minutes and ABC in thirty. They are going to ask you about…"

"Wait a second Maggie." Nathaniel said before muting the call.

"You are going to be busy." Karine smiled at her son.

"I'm afraid so. Mom, can you call grandpa and grandma? Tell them to don't do anything, I will handle it."

"Of course, Sweety."

"Call grandpa first, he's more reckless than grandma." Nathaniel said after thinking about it. "Ok Maggie, I'm back, you can go ahead." He said to the phone after unmuting himself.

*****

The next morning, Nathaniel was back in Columbia. During the night, the left side of his face had swollen and so he gathered even more looks than usual while he was walking across Campus. The look he was gathering was a mixture of appreciation, animosity or just amusement to see him badly bruised. Nathaniel just didn't care, he just ignored everyone, walking to the administration building.

"Nathaniel!" He heard someone call him before going to the stairs.

Turning around, he saw a lithe figure running in the hallway, someone he knew very well and was very used to seeing running after him.

"Hey Katty, what's up?"

"I'm so glad I caught up to you." She said before giving him a second once over. "Wow, you look like crap."

Nathaniel just laughed, it was one of the reasons that he liked Katty and always like to run with her. She was an honest girl.

"Finally, someone is being honest about it."

"Does it hurt?" She asked in concern.

"Like hell, yes."

"Why are you even here then? Do you at least take pain medication?"

"The Dean office called me and told me to come if it was possible, I said yes. Beside what you can see, I'm okay, I was discharged from the hospital last night already. And no, I don't take pain relief medication, they are full of crap. I can handle the pain on my own."

"Alright then. Let me tell you out of the bat that I know a lot of people who are glad about what you did last night. If the Dean or the administration wants to go after you, I can mobilize a lot of people really fast to manifest in front of this building. Even my parents saw your interview last night on CNN and talked to me about it. They are surprised to see that you are so normal, they didn't believe me before when I told them that you were always kind and respectful to me. They always thought that since you came from an extremely rich background, you would look down on us because of our statut or class."

"Thank you, this is always nice to hear but I believe I will be okay. I just defended myself after all. For the rest, I never cared about social status and you know it. I just liked people with strong moral ethics and who are smart. The rest are just dog shit to me." Nathaniel reassures calmly.

"I know and I told them that but seeing is believing I guess. Everyone who has eyes and saw the video knows that but I heard a rumor that the moron who attacked you, his parents are friends with the Dean or someone in the administration." She said with worry.

"Oh? I guess I'll see then. I'm not without support either if it comes to that. Well, I'll need to go or I'm going to be late. We will catch up later if you want." Nathaniel said before turning but was stopped quickly.

"Wait, wait! It's not all!" She hurriedly explained, Nathaniel turning back to her with his head tilted to the side. "I have a friend who worked at the Woman Society office and she was there last night. She knows that we are friends so she asked me to share what she told me with you in the hope you can help."

"Of course, I'll help if I can, you know me Katty."

"I do. Listen, this is what she told me."

Katty begins to tell the story that she was told, the smile of Nathaniel vanishing from his face and his eyes hardened. If anyone who really knew Nathaniel could see this expression, they would know that someone was going to enter a whole world of pain.