Antwoord - Joost Klein

47.

"How about we perform the new song on stage tonight?" Aggu suggested as we were 10 minutes away from the concert beginning.

"Are you telling me this now?" I annoyedly spoke first before even thinking of the great opportunity this could be.

"You serious? No, I can't do that. Have you seen how many people are out there?" Zarti declared instantly.

"This is going to be nothing compared to the other venues you are going to play at" Aggu confidently spoke with his words to encourage his friend.

"You think I can do it?" Zarti's eyes looked towards mine.

"Of course you can. There is nothing you can't do" I told him.

"Yeah?" His smile grew alongside his confidence.

"So sure of it. Plus, your girlfriend will be watching from the crowd so it could be a little surprise for her" I added trying to keep the smile plastered on my face.

"You're right about that one. She would be heels over heels to hear a song inspired by her live at a Ski Aggu and Joost Klein show" Zarti said.

"She is a lucky girl" I raised my eyebrows before collecting my stuff. "I will make sure the crew knows and set up an extra microphone"

I left the room in a hurry. Ever since I saw that look on Zarti's face when his girlfriend called him earlier in the day, every little smile I got from Zarti seemed fake. I knew he was genuinely a nice guy but the way he made me feel special without no intentions were fucking with my head.

There had been this doubt in the back of my mind ever since he broke up with me. I wanted him to see how happy I could be without him and let him see me with someone else to know what he missed out on. Not because I wanted him back, simply because I wanted to understand his reasons and still felt hurt.

Zarti left me without any real reason and ever since that I had been searching for an answer. He treated me no differently than anyone else, but the feeling kept swirling around in my brain searching for answers. How could he just leave me? And would Joost leave me too while I was unaware of the reasons behind the breakup?

I kept asking myself if my current relationship was going to fail if I didn't know any better from my past mistakes. Zarti made it seem like nothing was wrong but deep down I knew that there was more to it. If he liked me so much then why would he break up with me?

I shook the thought of my head to get into work mode again. This was the fourth last show of the tour so I knew it wouldn't last long before the tour stress would unwind. It had been a good tour filled with lots of experience, doubts, tears, and love.

The love I gained for Joost, his friends, and the process of me trying to love myself. The love I was trying to gain back for food. The love I had gotten from working again to keep myself occupied.

01099 would join us at the last two concerts: Leipzig and Berlin. I hadn't been home for a while and didn't really know if I wanted to come back home. I didn't consider my apartment as home, I never had. But Berlin was what I had gotten used to, I couldn't just give up on that.

If the collaboration of Zarti and Aggu would continue then I would probably have no seconds to spare if I wanted it to become successful. I knew Aggu was nowhere in deep water, but he used to be. I picked him up from the bottom and managed to help him become one of the most growing artists in Germany in less than two years.

If I wanted to do that for Zarti too, then I had to be completely focused on my work. No distractions if success was on my agenda.

"Could you grab the microphones from the box over there?" A crew member asked me after I had informed them of Zarti's guest performance.