Trying Your Luck // Joel Hokka

XXIV

"Can we get the pavement wetter? This isn't working out the way I want it," It was yet another night shoot and everyone was a bit cranky and tired, but the streets didn't look as dramatic as I wanted, "It's gonna take just a few minutes and we can all go to sleep."

It was harder to film in London at night time than I imagined, there still was a lot of buzz going around the city. We had only a few more days left before the end of the production, so everyone was getting tired and these night shoots didn't help. I constantly was alerted so I was even more tired than others. I was nervous, I was scared, I was apologizing all the time because I didn't know what I was doing, at least that's what I thought. But everyone reminded me that I'm getting worked up over nothing and everything actually was going smoother than I could have hoped for.

"You are obsessed with detail," my AD laughed at me, "But what the boss wants, she gets."

"The lights just don't look the way I want them to. Right, Michelle?" I pointed at my cinematographer and she agreed. It was supposed to be a moody scene where the main character is walking home from a late-night shift and sees a murder. It was almost the first scene in the movie, but it was one of the last scenes we are filming.

After everything was to my liking we continued the filming and everything went smoothly. As soon as the last scene was filmed, I saw how exhausted we all were and after four night shoots in a row we deserved the rest of the week off.

I walked into the make-up trailer to thank my actors and crew for their work and patience before heading off to the flat I was renting while staying in London. For the first time in a while, I wasn't staying with Julian and Claire. I wanted peace and not to think about the film, which didn't work out too well because my mind was almost all the time on the film, even in my dreams.

The flat wasn't much, but it was just enough during the filming. I felt so much more alive now when I was back on the set,  I spent most of the nights hanging around with my cast or going out with my friends for drinks, and the only thing that mattered the most was that I had a comfortable bed to crash on after an eventful day.

It was 6 am when I finally got home and the sun was already peeping around the corner. I knew that I needed to catch some sleep, but there were too many butterflies in my stomach for me to sleep. Joel and the boys were on their way to London and I was too excited to see them after almost two months.

I missed them all, I missed the chaos they always brought with themselves and I missed their madness. It was so easy to get tangled in their business because they all were open to new people and adventure, it was something the film industry lacked because in the film everything had to be perfect and polished to the brim. Every step, every angle, every word was perfectly calculated to engage with the public. While in music none of that mattered, if you messed up something on the stage it had a charm about it. It was an experience.

But of course, I missed Joel the most. After our emotional reunion, we decided that we shouldn't rush into anything while both of us were busy with work. But that didn't mean that we didn't spend too much time together to the point, I had to kick Joel out of my flat because he was getting too clingy. We were trying to keep our relationship low-key for now, but somehow we failed miserably. The situation wasn't ideal for a broken couple like us as now that the most I have seen him were through the screen of my phone. But we take what we can and make it work. I was missing him an awful lot and people closest to me saw that.

I woke up from the sound of my phone ringing as loudly as possible. I tried to find it on the nightstand but it wasn't there meaning that I had left it in my bag. I was too comfortable to get out of bed, so I let the phone ring and went back to sleep. After a few moments the phone rang again, I was thinking about ignoring it, but I groaned and got up.