Joe and Dianne: Dancing is better with you

Chapter 19 - Blackpool (part 1)

Dianne's POV:

"Oh for fucks sake, I hate this bag!" I screamed out as I awkwardly dragged along my broken suitcase down the road towards the hotel we were staying in for the next few nights. Joe was walking along with me but had been very quiet since we had gotten on the train back in London. His head was up but his eyes were fixed firmly onto a random point down the long meandering road that was but a stones throw away from the freezing cold ocean battering the beaches bellow the rocky promenade of Blackpool.

"Joe?" I questioned, his eerie silence becoming more than disconcerting for me. Still there was no answer from him - I assume that he's just tired and maybe slightly stressed about the next few days. Right now its Thursday and tomorrow he will step onto the most impressive Ballroom floor in the country, if not the world, to dance in front of his family and the producers. Fridays always get to Joe and I knew he never liked doing the tech runs and camera block throughs, but tonight he seems more on edge and more distant than usual. My care for Joe grows stronger and stronger by the day and usually his cheerful and calm self is my drug of choice to get me through the day, but now that it's missing I feel as if I too have left something behind. Something that I really needed to make this weekend just as special as it could possibly be.

"Joe!" I said louder attempting to get him out of his thoughts. He startled slightly before coming back to the real world and looking down at me with those big blue eyes.

"Yeah sorry what were you saying?" Joe said seeming slightly bemused with this entire scenario we had found ourselves in. The bruise on his forehead had come forward and was now showing through the makeup that had to be put on him for It Takes Two earlier this evening. Something about the dull lighting from the murky streetlamps made Joe seem more tired, seem upset and made that bruise seem all the more darker and concerning. Whatever exactly had happened must have been more than painful to produce such a prominent shadow on his forehead. In the nicest way possible to Joe, it's quite a big space to fill but somehow that bruise was covering a large proportion of the right hand side of his forehead.

"I was just checking that you were okay, you've been kind of quiet tonight." I said as sweetly as I possibly could. "Yeah I'm fine thanks Di." Joe said rather bluntly. Something about what he was saying wasn't right. I knew that he was lying to me which in some ways is really shitty but I had to accept that Joe just didn't want to talk about it. As we eventually got to the hotel along with all the other cast and crew members, their murmurs and inexplicable conversations were highlighting the ridiculous silence between Joe and I, something that I had never experienced between the two of us and something that I never wanted to feel again.

/time skip/

I sat on my bed in my hotel room feeling bored as anything. I had already had a shower, re-dyed my hair, and sorted out all the clothes and stuff that I'm gonna need for tomorrow, but still something seemed off. I knew that sleep was way out of the question as my mind was far to awake to even consider getting under the covers of the luscious hotel bed I was sat on. I got out my phone and scrolled through my contacts in the hope that I could chat to anyone. It was at times like this when I really missed having a proper boyfriend. I mean I have Joe but as far as making things official go I'm not at all convinced that Joe is ready for a long term relationship, especially with the additional stresses of the show and of the media pressing onto us to get together. The more I flicked through my contacts, it dawned on me just how much I wanted to speak to Joe about what had been on my mind since I freaked him out in training this morning. On the train when we kissed I know that I told him that I would wait until he wanted to talk about it but something really wasn't okay with that boy from Wiltshire and I could tell that both of our performances and the connection between the two of us would be off until this was worked out.