CHAPTER 125
Friday - The day before the final
After the concert, Finn and Nicole went to an amazing afterparty in McLaren's that lasted until the early hours of the morning. With all the special treatment he was getting, Finn felt like a real pop star. The next morning, they had planned to leave for Manhattan at 11 am but Finn woke up a couple of hours earlier. There was something he needed to do. Something he should've done so many times before but always avoided. He needed to visit someone.
Finn slipped out of the hotel unnoticed by the city around him. He got into his car and drove to the place where he was going to visit the person. Buying a bunch of flowers on the way, Finn parked the car ten minutes later. He stepped out and walked into the cemetery…
Finn cut across the field to the corner of a vast meadow and sat down next to a headstone.
"Hey mom," Finn said, speaking to the gravestone. "It's been a while. Almost nine years ago. I'm sorry I haven't come to see you at all. It's been a… busy couple of years. I miss you so much." He murmured. "So I joined the Army. It was both the best and worst decision I ever made. It showed me strength, resilience and hard work that was rivalled only by my life as a homeless person. But it tore my life to shred. It ripped apart my relationship with the people I loved… well, the person I loved."
Finn took a deep breath.
"I need help, mom." He whispered. "I need help. I'm untethered to this world. It's like I'm living life but not really living. I thought it would be easier once I escaped from captivity as a POW, but honestly… honestly, sometimes I wish I was still there in that prison cell. I escaped from one hell, only to transfer to an even worse one. I don't know how to live anymore. Every day, I wake up and it feels like my heart is frozen. I can't live like this for the rest of my life. I can't."
Finn's hands shook slightly.
"I need your help, mom. I need a sign. Please, mom, send me a sign of what I should do." Finn begged. "Something. Anything!" He cried to no avail. Of course she wasn't going to answer. She was gone, and she wasn't coming back. "But I can't kill myself. I can't do the thing I resented my birth mother so much for doing. That would make me just as bad as her. At least I know how she was feeling. She rathered be in hell in the afterlife than be in an even worse hell on Earth."
Finn rarely ever thought of, let alone mentioned, his birth mother. As far as he was concerned, she was no longer family. Her position as Finn's mother ended when she hanged herself.
"Anyways, I'm performing the biggest performance of my life tomorrow. Singing is like the one thing I can do to cope and if I get a record deal, I'll hopefully be out of this town forever, so I guess this is quite possibly goodbye. I love you and I miss you so much. Bye, mom." Finn whispered, laying the flowers down and walking away from the cemetery.
He drove back to the hotel in silence and he was back before Nicole had even woken up so there was no trace of his visit. Finn and Nicole flew back to Manhattan at 11 on the dot, and they were back by 2 in the afternoon for the soundchecks and final preparation. When Finn made it back to the hotel in Manhattan, he walked up to his room and threw his bags on his bed. There were literally only 3 rooms occupied out of the 15 on their floors, and all three of them were missing their roommates. It was so lonely to walk down the corridor of the hotel and not see his friends. But there was no time to dwell on that as it was time for the three finalists to do their sound checks.
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"Hey, hey, hey," Finn said, sitting down in the audience section of the stage next to Ella as Christopher did his soundcheck. The soundcheck was very different to every other week as they had transformed the Garden into its concert capacity by opening it up and adding extra seats, making the total capacity 40,000 instead of the usual 10.
"Hey, dude," Ella said, looking up and smiling at him. "How was your hero's welcome?" She asked.
"It was really cool. What about you? You were in Arizona, right?"
"Yeah, it was awesome! I got to see my family and friends which was pretty cool."
"Yeah, me too," Finn said. "So, you excited for tomorrow?"
Ella shook her head and laughed.
"Not really because let's face it, it's basically me against you on Saturday. Christopher has a guaranteed place in the day after's final." She remarked. Finn shrugged.
"I mean, you never know. If a hundred thousand people vote for each of us, to even it out, Christopher will have to pay a hundred thousand dollars which he obviously won't do. It could be us in that Sunday final."
Ella smiled.
"That's true. So, who are you singing with for your mystery duet tomorrow?"
"You first!" Finn replied.
"OK, I am dueting with… Beyonce!" Ella exclaimed. Finn wolf-whistled.
"Damn! That's gotta be really good! What song are you doing? Halo? Listen?"
Before Ella could answer, she was called up to do her soundchecks.
"I guess you'll see tomorrow." Ella said as she walked away. Finn smiled but on the inside, he was worried. He knew that tomorrow would probably end up being him vs. Ella for the final spot in Sunday's final and her singing with Beyonce was a scary thought.
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After their soundchecks, Finn, Ella and Christopher drove back to the hotel where they were greeted by a pleasant surprise… All of the finalists were standing in the lobby of the hotel when they walked in! The three finalists walked over to them and were immediately mobbed by their friends.
"Guys, what are you doing here?" Ella asked as she hugged her friends.
"We're here for the finals!" Jade exclaimed. "All of the finalists are invited. And besides, we have to sing the group performances altogether on both Saturday and Sunday."
It was 7 in the evening at this point and everyone was getting hungry so they decided to all go out for dinner at Nobu. The 18 finalists all sat together on one long table. Finn was at one end of the table,, squished between Ella and Josh from Union J, and had Jade and Rylan opposite them.
"So, Ella, Finn, are you guys ready for tomorrow?" Rylan asked them.
"Honestly, not really." Ella replied. "We had to learn 4 songs in 4 days. We had to work like 15 hours a day. It was hella rough. I must say, I'm actually kind of glad this competition's almost over." She said.
"I totally agree!" Finn exclaimed, laughing.
"Why?" Jade asked, confused. She was eliminated in the third week of the competition so she never really got a chance to see how stressful it got.
"Well, as the competition went on, there was more of everything. More songs to learn, more interviews to do, more photoshoots, more everything. Honestly, the best way to describe the past few weeks is probably… traumatic." Finn said.
"Like don't get us wrong: we're so thankful for this competition and everything it has done for us. But once it's over, and our careers actually start, it'll be a bit of a sigh of relief, and we'll be able to take our foot off the gas a bit." Ella added.
"Yeah. This probably makes us sound so ungrateful. Trust me, nobody is more grateful for this than I am. I finally might be able to move out of my crapsack of an apartment and buy a better place. This competition has changed my life, but it has also been the most stressful ten weeks of my life. And I served for 7 years!" Finn said.
"Anyways, you guys are going to be great. We can't wait to watch you." Rylan said.
"Thanks." They replied. Suddenly, the whole table's food arrived. It took pretty much every server in the restaurant to carry all 18 of their meals. Before they ate, Rylan stood up.
"Listen up, everyone. Why don't we hear a few words from our three finalists? Wait a second… Where's Chris?" He asked, looking down the table.
"He went back already to get some rest before tomorrow." Kye replied. Rylan checked his watch.
"It's literally 8:30. Whatever. Finn, Ella: you guys got anything to say?"
"No, not really. Finn?" Ella said. Finn laughed and stood up and raised his glass of champagne.
"Um… Good food, good meat, good God, let's eat, am I right?!" Finn exclaimed, and everyone laughed. "No, but um… on a serious note, I want to thank all of you guys for making the past 10 weeks so amazing for me. As you guys know, my background is slightly… different to yours, but you all made me feel welcome here, and now, you guys are some of my best friends. We all came from different places and I feel like nobody at this table expected to be sitting in the VIP booth of Nobu in Tribeca. A very wise man called Drake once said… 'started from the bottom now we here.'" Finn joked. "I love you guys. Cheers!"
"Cheers!" They all chanted in reply and they tucked into their meals. The rest of the night flew by for them. It was quite possibly their last night they would ever spend together and they were all going to miss each other so much. In ten weeks, they had gone through more than average people go through in a year. At 11 pm, Finn and Ella retired to their rooms to get some rest before their big performance the next day. As Finn closed his eyes, he thought of his winner's single and how compatible the lyrics of the chorus were to his life. His current problem with the song was that he had no emotional attachment to it but now that he realised how remarkably similar it was to his life, he was going to crush it on Sunday! He just had to make it through Saturday first.