All I Know | Bojan Cvjetićanin

2. The Morning After

Kris' POV

The dull pounding behind my eyes prevented me from even attempting to open my eyes. I rolled over in my bed, hoping the slight change in position was enough to relieve my headache, but was quickly proven wrong. I slowly opened my eyes, accompanied by a loud groan, but quickly closed them again as the light coming from the window made the pounding that much worse. Fuck drunk me for not closing the blinds properly last night. 

But what a fucking night it was. The night of the second semi final was insane. We had been working up to that performance for over four months. For four months, our lives had been consumed by preparing for our Eurovision performance. From applying for EMA and getting selected internally internally instead, to travelling all over Europe to write and record the song and attend all the Eurovision preparties. And then I haven't even mentioned the thousands of interviews, thousands of hours of rehearsing, thousands of meeting about outfits, lighting, staging, led shows and what not, and to top it off the stress our lost luggage had caused. 

It was a time I'll always remember, a time that would always create a bond between the five of us in the band. I could tell anyone about what it's been like to perform at Eurovision, but only the other four members of the band could truly understand what it's like. 

But it hadn't stopped at the semi finals. We had been the last act to have been announced as a qualifier, which had made the relief of hearing our country being announced that much greater. We didn't spend too long celebrating, as our focus had almost instantly shifted to the grande finale. 

And then, last night, it had all come to an end. All our hard work, our efforts to introduce people to our music, to the Slovenian music scene, it was just over. It wasn't like we ended up in some black hole of emptiness. It was quite the contrary, with all of the stress that had been building up inside of us finally gone, it was finally time to let go. Enjoy the night ahead of us without having to think about what interview, rehearsals or other commitments we had the next day. 

Don't get me wrong, we had our fair share of parties these last couple of months. But last night was just something else. Our plane back home was set to leave late the next day, so the only thing that was on our mind was having a great night with the many new friends we made from all over Europe. 

As we left the venue, the five of us did a couple of final interviews, which all basically came down to the same thing. Yes, we came 21st. Yes, we were happy with our performance. Yes, we hoped to tour Europe later this year. Yes, we wanted to congratulate Loreen on her win. 

We went back to the hotel, where friends and family that joined us in Liverpool had watched the finale together. We talked for a bit, got changed, and headed to the afterparty. We danced all night long, we had a few drinks, or rather, more than a few. I remember being on the dance floor with Jan, Nace and Luke Black. We headed to the bar after, where we did a few rounds of shots with Mae Muller, but other than that, my memory was too patchy to really make out anything else of what happened last night. 

 . ✦ . 

After a moment of self pity I decided to climb out of bed to get a bottle of water to soothe my dry throat, which drunk me had also forgotten to put down on the bedside table last night. Just like I forgot to charge my phone ...I started to dislike drunk me more and more at this time. I grabbed some water from the mini fridge and downed half the bottle in one go before plugging in my phone and hopping into the shower. 

After the shower, I walked back to the bed and laid back down. I checked my phone and decided to ignore the countless notifications for now and messaged the group chat. 

10:27 Kris: Anyone up for breakfast in 20? I need some food in me

As I waited for the boys to respond, I opened my text messages, my eyes first fell on the messages from my brother and sister. I considered FaceTiming Maks for a moment, but quickly decided against it as I just was not in the mood to talk to anyone right now. Not after I had some coffee at least. I typed a quick thanks ❤️️ , copied it and send it to the both of them, and a bunch of other family members and friends that texted me after last night's performance. Of course there were a bunch of people who I hadn't spoken to since high school that texted me out of nowhere. I didn't pay much attention to those. Every time something big happened, the release of an album, winning an award, it were all times that people reached out more than usual. A lot of the messages were actually pretty nice, but the ones were people were begging for attention or had to make it all about themselves pretty much ruined it for all the others. Not even halfway through replying to the messages from the people that I did know well, and finally one of the other boys