Splintered Hearts

Meddling Affairs.

I had everything set up, I had my pizza, my soda, my laptop, my camera, my phone and the remote controller on standby in case I needed a distraction. My plan for the evening was to work my butt off, I wanted all the photos to be reviewed, checked, edited, checked, reviewed again and finally finalised before I showed Zak and then sent to the channel. With over 100 photos I had to pick at least 30 for Zak to choose. I got the images off the camera and sat on the edge of the couch flicking through them. I firstly check for any anomalies, any lens flare, or any formatting issues, out of my 100 photos, 4 of them were deleted from lens flare. To me that was good going.. I now only had 96 photos to work on.

Picking up a slice of pizza I grinned "You speak awful things to me." before shoving the end into my mouth and taking a bite of pure heaven. They made good Pizza here in Sacramento, I had to give them that!

I went to work on any photos with humans in, so the crew and interview photos were sorted into a separate folder, the rest were put aside for me to check later.

Clicking on a photo of Zak stood on the front porch of the house I began my work...

Straightening the photo, crop the image, before starting on levelling and adjusting the picture exposure. Once that was done I moved onto the contrast, shadows and highlights. After was saturation and finally sensor cleaning the photo. I sat back and tilted my head looking at the picture before smiling.

"There you go.. Found some handsomeness in you there Bagans." I smiled before saving the photo and moving to the next.

...............

Looking up at the clock I saw it was 3.17am. My butt was numb, the pizza was gone and my soda was dry. "Just a few more minutes.. That is all I need." I grumbled.

I sat back away from the computer screen relieving the burning in my back from being in the same position for hours. Looking at the screen I saw Marti and her husband, it reminded me of the picture she had given me earlier. Lifting my butt I pulled it from my back pocket and unfolded it carefully.

My breath caught in my throat at the image...I felt sadness coupled with anger. I wanted to screw the piece of paper up, I wanted to tear it to a million little pieces and brush it all away. But I couldn't... I wouldn't do that. I could feel my emotions dwelling, so I folded the piece of paper back into it's small square and placed it onto the table before throwing myself back into work again.

* * * * * * *

The next morning...

{Zak}

I stepped out of the car and blew out my cheeks in relief, "What a lockdown guys." I spoke turning to face them.

"The responses we got.. Man I still can't believe it." Jay replied shaking his head slowly.

"It's gonna be one I can not wait to review." Billy replied closing the car door behind him. I looked up at the morning sky and rubbed my head to relieve the throbbing behind my skull.

"Still not feeling good Bro? You hit the floor pretty hard." Aaron spoke looking up from his phone.

"Yeah.. Look I'm gonna skip breakfast and just put my head down for a few hours. We will hit the road this afternoon and I could do with some rest."

They all nodded before Aaron's face gave me a look. I knew what he was going to say almost instantly. "I'm going to bed Aaron.. If she is awake, I'll send her down to you."

"Thanks man."

"You like her?" I asked when Billy and Jay walked off.

He gave me a shy smile "I- Kinda.. I don't know man. I mean, we both get on well but I think it's gonna be a close friendship. I just feel protective of her..."