The boys have a slot on the main stage the next day, but this time I head down with them as they go to the green room to prepare. They're going to do a 'Q&A' and a 'would you rather' game on stage, so I help them with questions and ideas. I can tell that Phil is getting nervous as soon as we finished with our brainstorming, he starts chewing on his bottom lip and fiddles with his fingers. I take his hand in mine, stopping him from getting more worked up.
"Calm down babe, you're going to do excellent. Everyone in that audience loves you and they still will, even if you stand still and don't say a word. You've got this." I comfort him, smiling at him whilst I straighten an odd hair on his fringe. "Thanks babe." He says, managing a smile back at me. "I'm so proud of you Phil, you've come so far." I give him a kiss then Dan walks over to us, "Okay, it's time to go." He says, Phil breathes out, stands up and then he seems to relax and return to his normal self.
"Good luck!" I say, as they walk off to backstage. "Hi! We haven't really met yet but I'm Louise and you're Jess aren't you?" Louise, most commonly known as 'Sprinkleofglitter' greets me, bounding up towards me with a joyful beam. "Oh, hi!" I say awkwardly, but a little stunned as I have a mini fan girl moment over one of my favourite YouTubers. "I saw you with the boys yesterday at the pool and I thought, she looks like a future friend!" "Really? Great!" I say. "Shall we go and find a good spot to watch the boys?" She offers. "Can we really watch them?" "Sure, I know a good little spot, near the stage, no one will notice us, especially when they're on stage."
She takes my hand and pulls me along, through a corridor, through a door and then we emerge at the side of the stage in a crowd of thousands of people. "Wow, that's a huge audience!" I say looking behind me. "You can say that again, but don't worry, they're pretty much professionals on stage." We find a couple of seats in a taped off zone just in time to be deafened by the screams as the boys walk on stage. Louise is right of course, the boys don't show a flicker of nerves and the show runs smoothly, having us all in laughter. At one point, during the show, Louise leans over to me and says, "That's your boyfriend Jess! How amazing is he?" I burst into tears as she says this and she laughs and pulls me in to give me a hug.
Once the show is over, we rush back to the green room to see the boys coming back from backstage. I run over to Phil and give him a hug. "Where have you been?" He asks, setting me back down on the ground. "We watched the show of course!" Louise grins, hugging me again. "Wait! Jess, have you been crying?" Phil asks, completely full of worry as his eyes scan over my face. "Yes," I admit, "But it was because I was so proud of you." A look of relief washes over his gorgeous face as he kisses me. "You see, you spend 25 minutes with Louise and you're already crying." Phil jokes. "I didn't mean to make her cry, we were just caught up in the moment." Louise giggles.
"Well at least you weren't crying at us then." Dan adds, "It wasn't bad was it?" The four of us go out to lunch together, finding a little café which was ten minutes' walk from the hotel. Seeing as lots of other meet and greets were still going on, it was pretty quiet. When our food comes, Louise gets out her camera and Phil gives me a look. Louise realises, "Oh sorry! Of course, don't worry I'll put it away." "No, its fine, I don't mind." I say, taking Phil's hand under the table. "We could refer you as a friend." Dan suggests and I nod happily.
"No!" Phil says, "If you're going to be on camera then I don't want to lie." He turns to look at me, "I'm happy with us being on camera. I'm not saying that right now, Louise tells everyone that you're my girlfriend but I don't mind for us to be together, we can just appear together and not make this a big deal." "Okay," I agree. I am just happy that we don't have to hide anything. Louise switches on her camera and I realise that Phil and I have taken another big leap in our relationship, one that I hoped that we would never regret. There would be no going back once it's on the internet.