Something's gotta give

12 - Touring

It was now more than one week ago since Charlie'd joined OneRepublic for the documentation of their Native tour in Europe by taking pictures. Her employer had checked on her first photos of the Belgrade gig - and to Charlie's relief he was delighted. So he didn't cancel their contract. His confession about what was going on between him and his wife helped her a lot to deal with his sometimes stressful state of mind. Most of the time she tried to ignore him when he was aggressive towards her, now and then. Whenever he went over the top for her likings she was able to stop his sarcasm just by giving him a hidden look or answering adequately. Still, they went on to tease and bother one another by words, gestures or expressions and they were both enjoying it, secretly.

Charlie considered herself very lucky to watch them on stage and to listen to them live. The shows were getting better and better gig by gig, like every former performance was just only a warm-up for the next one. Ryan's voice was fascinating and his ability of hitting the high notes raised day by day. And she only got the confirmation of what she already had noticed by watching the live videos on the internet: On every show it was like a girls' choir was supporting them for the audience was manly consisting of female fans of all ages - as well as it was mostly Ryan to interact with the crowd.

Due to a brilliant lights and sound engineering team the setup was perfect. The songs and their succession varied slightly from show to show though "Light it up" was always to open up and "If I lose myself" to close down every concert. To see the silhouettes of the band behind the white curtain hiding the whole stage was still giving her a shiver even when she saw it for the third time. And as soon as that curtain went down and the whole band became visible to the crowd her heart skipped a beat. Just like she felt regrets whenever the final song came on.

It was amazing how Ryan managed to use the whole stage including the ramp into the auditorium running, jumping, dancing and singing at the same time, still hitting every note. Whenever there was something to climb or jump on, to or from - he did it, to the excitement of all spectators. They were always going wild, screaming and shouting, as soon as he was doing that. Still, the crowd never went out of his control - they just kept on cheering.

Charlie thought him just to be crazy, sometimes. At least for somebody who'd already damaged his tendons priorly. Any time he climbed the piano to jump off it on "Love runs out" like he used to do she always kept her fingers crossed secretly, not exactly knowing why she felt uncomfortable, suddenly. It was breathtaking every time and she had to concentrate on that moment to catch him doing it on camera at the right moment - but those pictures were some of the best she'd ever taken.

From Belgrade they went to Bucharest and then to Zagreb, afterwards. In every city the guys took their time to explore them, sometimes accompanied by a city guide, sometimes on their own. Charlie was invited to join them but so far she had always denied for she were running out of time, otherwise. It was necessary to examine and sort out the taken photos the very same day. But she was kept informed what they were doing and where they were going - because Ryan was tweeting pictures all the time. At an early stage they'd told her it was inevitable to follow @OneRepublic on Twitter and so she did, not aware of the fact that it was only Ryan who was sending those messages, at first. But when she got promptly followed back she suddenly got a direct message which said: "U R missing out on a beautiful place. Too bad you've got a job 2 do. ;-) RT"

Since then she knew it was his account and he was tweeting on behalf of the band. "I've already been there, no worries. CH", she texted him back. It only took a few seconds until he answered: "U R still missing out on the fun we're having! :) RT" She wrote back: "Get lost! :p CH" He didn't answer directly but a few seconds later there was a new tweet and a selfie of Ryan with sunglasses on, the baseball cap turned backwards, smiling, with the old town of Bucharest in the background: "Getting lost... in the beauty of Bucharest's historic sites :)" She was about to retweet it by adding a personal remark: "Hope, you'll be found again, some day.", but she cancelled it because she didn't want to draw any attention on herself in public.