Affair With JXDN

Chapter 3

Feeling tired as well as over it, I was trying my hardest to convince myself to work for just one more hour. It was my fifth night up past 1am trying to perfect the edits on Jaden's YouTube vlogs, Tiktoks and press releases. It was hard to believe that he had rose to such fame simply from his social media, considering the shambles it was in when I was handed the job of running it all.

When did I turn so lazy, and where did all this winging come from.
'This is what you get paid to do Dylan. Suck it up'. I whispered to myself, being cautious not to wake Brynn who was lightly snoring on the couch next to me. It was great having her input into everything, and I definitely struggled to stay motivated for the hours after she dozed off every night.

My phone buzzed beside me.

1 MSG
Jaden Hossler
Hey you up?

It was 1.14am. I obviously am up. But I should ignore it. Ever since we met I have been doing everything in my power to damage control the situation and bring things back to a profession level. Aside from the occasional kiss he would plant on me when no one was looking, or a sneaky hand on my backside when he knew he could get away with it, Jaden had, for the most part, obliged. My heart dropped every time he touched me and I froze, but no one ever seemed to notice, there was always so much going on.

My thumbs hovered over the keyboard of my phone

Yea, what's up? I typed. Then deleted
Yes, awake editing. Why?

I hit send, before my logical brain had a chance to delete again.
FFS Dylan, why?? Disappointed in myself, I turned my phone off and through it over the back of the couch. It had taken a lot of hard work over the last month to build our professional relationship up to what it was, I couldn't give in now. Of course it wasn't all hard, grinding work. A part of having a good team with even better chemistry is being able to have fun together, especially in this line of work, the laughter and good times spilled out onto the viewer who felt it as well. To be honest it would have been vertically impossible to not have fun working with Jaden and the Sway LA boys on a daily basis. They were defiantly equivalent to an underdeveloped frat house who did the dumbest things, but they were all also very bright and creative and always a pleasure to work beside. It was obvious they really considered themselves as brothers, and never took any of the drama with more than a pinch of salt.

Behind the scenes Josh was very much a business man, and extremely knowledgeable in algorithm's and predicting new trends. Bryce was like that one popular jock from high school that picked on everybody, a tough exterior, but underneath very smart in investment and money not that he would let on. Noah was exactly as cute and as sweet as the press made him out to be, very smart with a scholarship from Yale up his sleeve if he needed it, also extremely gifted soccer player, like Olympic level. Griffin came from a long line of never say die hard workers, his mum a nurse, his father a jack of all trades, he spent all his after school years helping out a local farm in order to help ends meet at home. Jaden, well he was honestly the sweetest, most accepting, confident, human advocate I had ever met.

There were so many other people that made up the entourage on a daily basis. Camera men, photographers, creative directors, marketing specialist, other influences, girlfriends, family... it was always extremely hectic. It was easy to see why I felt so drained and over it.

I promised myself one more hour, then bed. I pushed all my random thoughts to one side, determined to not go off on any tangents again for the space of the next hour.

I added audio, rearranged scenes, cut out unnecessary boring bits and finally added the last touches to the animation all without looking at the clock. By the time I had saved the final copy and sent it to Jaden's drop box it was nearly 5am. I had worked far more than my quota of hours this week and decided the day ahead would be for sleep. I let him no in the attached note that I would not be over today unless he needed me specifically.