Backstage

Part 8

The next day dawned. I woke up with a sense of unease, replaying the events of the evening before in my mind. I couldn't shake the feeling of frustration. I decided to keep my distance from Joost and focus on my work for today. So I got ready and went downstairs to get some breakfast. I got my food and sat down with Olivia. She's really nice. She's funny and kind and caring and supportive. We have become good friends. As we were eating I saw Joost looking at us at the corner of my eye.

After we ate we went to the bus that took us to the arena. There our team leader told us todays agenda.

"OK so everyone knows what they're responsible for. Today actual work begins. We will take a look at the visuals, costumes, props. Basically check if everything is alright. Joost, you'll go do more interviews, podcast, photoshoots with other contestants. Good luck people."

My job was to take pictures of our teams backstage work. Just to document our whole trip basically. I was happy when I heard that Joost will be away from us. It'll make keeping my distance more easy. Olivia went to check on the costumes so I went with her. Took some pictures of her. Then I went to director of the performance. Took some pictures of him giving directions to arenas crew. And just spent my day walking around, taking pictures of everyone. Then I sat down, downloaded them into my laptop and began editing. As I was concentrated into my work someone walked behind me and covered my eyes.

"Guess who"

"Marko?"

It was Marko.

"Surprise!"

"Hey, how are you?"

"Oh you know, I'm in the first semi final so lots of rehearsing and stuff."

"I'm sure you'll do great." I assured him

"Thank you. Well I see you are busy and I just stopped to say hello and now I need to go so good luck"

"Bye Marko, it was nice seeing you"

When Marko walked away I saw Olivia standing. She was waiting for us to finish and now she walked up to me and sat next to me.

"Hi, is there something between you and Marko" she asked.

"Well no actually, we get along really great but no. Umm we're friends sort of."

"What about you and Joost? I saw you together many times before."

"Ughhh ok listen."

And I told her about everything. How we have worked together and met up even before Eurovision. How he invited me, picked me up, came to me in my hotel room. How we smoked and chatted together, how he switched tickets so he could sit next to me on the plane. And now how he introduced me to Marko and now is jealous and tried to make me jealous too.

"Whoah, that's a bit fucked up. Why the fuck is he jealous. It's not like you're together. And you don't even like Marko in that way. Girl, I say you need to have a serious talk with Joost. It sounds like he's sending mixed signals and playing games that are causing unnecessary drama."

"I don't really want to talk with him right now. I think he needs to understand that he's being unreasonable."

"Yes. Make him come crawling back to you"

"Haha, yeah sure. Anyways, do you want to go grab lunch?"

"Yeah let's go"

We didn't want to go to the canteen so we went out to the city to this nice traditional food cafe. We ate, the food was nice and went back to the arena because our lunch break was over.

Most of the job was done so we didn't have much to do and we just walked around and acted busy. Later we sat in lounge area and chatted.

After few hours we were done. So we took our things and went back to the hotel. Me and Olivia agreed on going to explore the city a bit. So we got ready and walked around enjoying pretty views of Malmo. There were many Eurovision themed decorations so we took some pictures and had good time. It was getting late so we went back to our hotel. Olivias room was across my so we hugged goodbye and entered our rooms.

I took a shower, did my skincare, changed and was ready to just lay in bed and scroll on the internet before going to sleep. But no. I got yet another knock on the door.