Tumblr Fangirl turned YouTuber Girlfriend?!

16th

Surely I should be nervous about how my voice sounded, or how the banter would flow, or if the equipment would crash, or something else sensible rather than worrying about kicking Nate over the shin?

Months of work had let up to this moment. It felt eerily like an oral exam and I was not very familiar with those. Throughout most of my undergraduate we'd had written exams. In those you got to study beforehand then sit down with at least a couple of hours to properly answer something on paper. 

Oral exams were scarier. Even with preparation and if you rehearsed until you knew your words backwards and forwards, you still couldn't account for their interruptions or questions. 

"Are you nervous, Megs?" Nate asked, sounding both surprised and amused.

If I had not been so wired, I'd probably have paused to appreciate the nickname. We'd grown closer as friends while working on this and I considered Nate a good friend in his own right rather than the boyfriend of my best friend and a YouTuber I used to watch religiously. 

"Why wouldn't I be?" I questioned and bit my fingernails. It was a bad habit and the moment I realised that I was doing it, I forced my hand to drop. 

"No, it's perfectly normal. It's just so rare to see you on edge. You always seem to have it together."

Clearly, we hadn't reached the state in our friendship where I'd ball my eyes out after a fight with my family. Maybe we would in time. Either case, I always had Emma and Abbey as shoulders to cry on when I needed it. 

"We've been working really hard on this," I said and sat down in the chair. We were just in Nate's home office and the table was seemed so small now that microphones and the works were spread across the surface. 

Nate sat down opposite me and I immediately panicked about kicking him over the shin. When I got into talking passionately, I spoke with my whole body; arms flailing about, rocking side-to-side, legs mysterious kicking out. Shit, I might kick Nate while we were recording. 

"It's just a little introductory segment first and then we move onto the first actual episode later on," Nate reminded me.

"That's why it's important though!" I argued. "This is our only chance to make a first impression! As the term states, you only get to have it once, the first time. It needs to be good, even if it will be much shorter than the actual episodes."

The corner of Nate's lips curled into a compassionate smile. 

"We can always try again if we're not content with it. Honestly though, I think we should just start recording and see where it leads us."

Nate would not have done well at university, unless he was one of those annoying people, who could make perfect sense without having a clear-cut structure beforehand.

"Isn't that how you record you videos? No thoughts, just pressing record?" I asked, teasing in my voice. 

"You know it is," Nate answered, completely impenetrable to my joke. "You've seen me film multiple times now. It's what keeps this whole thing organic, fresh and personal. It works for me. And don't pretend you don't do it too. I've seen you answer asks on Tumblr where you're suddenly writing a five-page essay. Don't tell me you plan those."

"I don't, no," I admitted. I just got really into social issues and I always had an overflowing amount of things to say on specific issues. People seemed to like it though, even if I doubted how they made it through my rambles. If I was lucky, I had just a smidgen of the talent for speaking freely and still making sense, matching the likes of Dan Howell when he was live streaming.