Riptide // Jack Maynard

Chapter Eight

I couldn't believe my eyes. I felt the butterflies whipping around my stomach as I took a look into the audience and tightly gripped onto my tummy to prevent myself from feeling sick.

The audience was huge, by far the biggest audience than the others we had seen this morning. There were fans in the audience with banners, some wearing their own personalised merch. None of us had realised any merch so it was shocking to see someone wearing a hat saying 'GTGeorge' which was George's channel name, and jumpers with our names on it. I just couldn't believe our fans actually appreciated us that much. I just expected them to be the kind of people that watched numerous Youtubers to keep themselves entertained and we were just one of those secondary channels whom they appreciated, but weren't really a big deal. At least not enough for them to go out their way and design their own clothing for us. 

This was unreal.

We sat down on the three empty chairs on the stage as the host, Melanie introduced us which was followed by the crowd cheering. Despite having a live audience our questions were being asked via Twitter. 

"How are you all feeling prior to this Q&A?" Melanie asked us.

Luckily Dylan spoke up first so I had a few extra seconds to prepare myself to reply. It's a good thing he is a lot more confident than myself and George even. He's just straight up, to the point and nothing can shut him down. I envied that about him as no matter how I may appear on camera I was very shy and awkward in person, as you witnessed already, and I will gradually become more confident in the presence of people based on how well I know them.

"Incredible." Dylan stated. "We've all been waiting months for this. It's our first time doing something like this so it's a little bit nervous wrecking, but we are beyond excited to do this for you all."

"Great." Melanie replied taking out her phone and swiping through it. "for the chance to ask the three a question tweet it to us with the hashtag #AskDDG and I may pick it out. Ok so first question is from AmieeLee17 and she asks - 'Are you three ever going to extend your group and give yourselves a name like The Sidemen and Team 10?' 

The three of us all turned to look at each other before replying. Once again Dylan was the first to respond.

"I mean we've actually never spoken about this. I think we would welcome new members to our group if we come across the right person, but even if we don't that won't stop us from connecting with different Youtubers for collaborations. Again we have never thought about giving ourselves a name, but it's a good idea I think we should talk about."

George and I nodded before I spoke up. "I think we've just never really thought of ourselves as a like branded group..." As I said that I had the feeling of the butterflies ripping their way out my stomach as I tightly clenched onto it again to try and avoid the pain of the nerves. "I mean in comparison to The Sidemen and Team 10 which are a lot bigger and better aim to create content with each other constantly. We're just three good friends who started off on our own and try to collaborate regularly because we enjoy it and know our fans do too. But it's a good idea for us to think about making it an official thing."

"Ok, second question is from JustGeorginaa and she asks 'George, whats the inspiration behind your channel name?'"

George's face grew nervous from the second his name was mentioned and you could tell all pressure was on him as he went to respond."

"Er- It's quite embarrassing really." George began. I could tell he was nervous by the way he was scratching the back of his head really thinking about his reply and his awkward chuckle. "I actually made my channel when I was like 12 and it was back in the day of MSN and stuff where people would abbreviate words like by the way to btw and got to go was G2G. So in my young mind I thought it would make myself look really cool to add an abbreviation to my name and start of some kind of trend so when I made my twitter, YouTube, etc at that age I chose G2George as my username which would make my username 'go to George' which isn't great."

"That's not actually so bad." Dylan replied and George raised his eyebrow. "You can be one of those agony aunts. If anyone here has any problems they need to talk about they can go to George and he will help you out." This was caused the crowd and Melanie to all laugh along together.

The Q&A went on for another 15 minutes and was followed by a meet and great, by the time we had finished all of it was 1pm. The Q&A got better as I began to adjust to being on the stage and gain some more confidence and the meet and greet also took a lot of pressure off me. The fans were so nice and full of compliments and it was so easy to talk to them. 

As we finished up with he meet and greet we said our goodbye to everyone and went back stage. Surprising Saffron and Anastasia were still there, I thought they'd probably get bored and move on once the meet and greet started, however they were both still sat there, only now someone else appears to have joined them and were showing them something on his phone which they were laughing along to.

Dylan and George headed over in their direction as soon as they saw them and I followed behind. The four of them seemed to be getting on quite well, despite George's nerves, but I haven't actually spoken either of them yet which made me feel a little bit awkward so as soon as we reached them and they started talking I whipped out my phone and decided to go on Snapchat. I was too caught up watching Snapchat Stories I didn't realise someone had come up besides me until they spoke.

"Good job out their." The voice said and I looked up to see Jack again. Let's avoid a repeat of last night.

"Oh, thanks." I replied.

"It's also scary when you do it for the first time, but you just need to remember everyone in the audience are there for you and it'll help you loosen up a bit."

"I know. It's just so hard to adjust to having an audience in front of you. I tried telling myself I was just filming a video, but it didn't work. I think I loosened up as it went on though."

Jack nodded. "Just imagine the audience naked." He laughed.

"I mean the audience is full of like 13 year olds.. I don't really fancy picturing them naked to be honest." I laughed.

"Haha, true. Maybe just imagine someone else in the audience naked." He said with a wink before walking off causing my cheeks to grow hot and fluster.

I watched him walk out the room. Did Jack Maynard mean what I thought he did and wink at me? What do I even take that as? Was that flirting, was he just making a joke? My head was spinning.

George must've noticed as he turned to me asking if I was ok.

"Uh- yeah, fine." I replied and he nodded diverting his attention back to Dylan and the girls.