Dating a YouTuber?!

Chapter 34: Grieving

I had always liked the feel of early November just before the leaves fell off the trees. It was an array of beautiful orange colours and I was visiting every possible park in London to get photos of the lovely colours.

I finally headed home after hours of running around with my camera in front of my face. I decided to go to Nate’s as I knew we would most likely be editing. His daily vlog was due upload in two hours and he usually ending up pushing the work to the last possible minute.

I was thinking of wordings for my blog post when I climbed the stairs. I opened the door with my key and called out to let Nate know that I had arrived. I didn’t hear a response and instantly I worried. Nate could just be hearing loud music in headphones but he somehow always heard me.

“Nate?” I called again, my voice trembling.

I threw my bag and jacket onto the counter and rushed into the flat. I found him in the corner of his study room. He was crying and pressing his palms to his skull.

I kneeled beside him and pulled him into my grasp. He didn’t resist but he didn’t make any effort to embrace me back.

I wanted to know what had happened, what that  could possibly make him react this way. I had never seen anything like it. I terrified me beyond words. Still, I didn’t ask him. His eyes were flickering everywhere and I didn’t think that me bombarding him with questions would help.

I wondered if it had been something from YouTube that had set him off but I highly doubted it. His viewers were generally so supportive and I knew he was a master in not letting hate get to him. After all, he had taught me how to do it, even if I wasn’t as good as him.

His phone was lying besides him and it started buzzing. Nate didn’t seen to even hear it. It was his sister’s number flashing on the screen. It felt as if my blood froze.

It was something with his family. Horrible scenarios started running through my head. What if something had happened to his parents or his sister? I thought of my own siblings and parents and got teary-eyed. I knew that they were safe but I loved Nate’s sister and tolerated his parents but I knew that obviously he loved them very much.

I was getting so emotional that I started shaking and my eyes spilled over. A single tear ran all the way to my chin and landed on Nate’s cheek. It seemed to wake him and he looked me in the eyes. His baby blues were so bloodshot.

“They can’t be dead,” he muttered and pulled me in closer.

Again I wanted to speak, to ask him but I daren’t. He would tell me when he could.

“Gail…” he sobbed.

That was his grandmother’s name and she was the wife of Bob whom I had met at his cousin’s wedding. I bit into the inside of my cheek to keep from sobbing too. But he was taking about deaths in plural, so someone else had died too.

“Bob…” he said more normally but the name was a bare whisper on his lips.

“I can’t believe it. He stayed strong for her,” Nate said but he was sobbing so violently that it was difficult to hear. “He called me last night to say goodbye, only I didn’t know.”

Suddenly his body tense and he stood up swiftly. His expression was changed entirely.

“Shut up, bloody phone,” he told the phone as he picked it up and threw it across the room. I heard the screen crack and the ringing stopped but couldn’t care less at the moment.

“I didn’t know! He told me that he loved me and that he was proud of me but that bastard!” Nate screamed from the top of his lungs. “How could he just give up?”