Risk & Reward

Five

Shi💕

What are you doing
right now?

Calum chuckles as he sees the message, somehow in the last four days it was a question that had cropped up multiple times, but this was the first time she'd asked first.

Shi💕

I just stepped out of my car
at a friend's house. We're
having a little celebratory
night. A few drinks and a
bonfire type thing. What are
you doing right now?

Laying on my bed waiting
for my friends to join our
zoom call so we can all
listen to Ashton's new
album together. I'm making assumptions here, but are
you celebrating the first half
of his album dropping with
him tonight?

I am. It's a really good
album, worth celebrating. I
hope you enjoy it

I'm very excited for it.
Please disregard any
weird tweets you see
about or from me tonight.
I tend to live tweet with
albums and it can get
interesting

I'll enjoy it then, and I'll
message you a bit later.
Gotta get inside before
the drop.

We'll see. Might scare
you off tonight with
my tweets 😉

Probably not, and you
deserve to listen
uninterrupted to the
album for the first time.
Soak it all in

I will

Calum tucks his phone into his pocket, hitting the lock button on his key fob again to make sure he locked his car. He can't seem to wipe the smile off his face though as he jogs up the steps and pushes through the front door into Ashton's house. He'd only met Shi briefly five days ago, but she did something to him, from the first moment he'd caught sight of her it had been there.

Their conversation had been so easy at Luke's show, and then so easy again while messaging Friday night. He'd hated that she'd suddenly stopped responding that night, enough to message her again Saturday. Just a simple 'what are you doing right now?' She'd responded twenty minutes later that she was back at work after three days off. The conversation had then turned to asking her about her job. He'd found out she is an interior designer, and though she doesn't usually work too many Saturdays she had things to finish up for staging a home for an open house on Sunday.

Sunday he'd been bored after a run and some time working on music so he'd messaged her again, 'What are you doing right now?'. He'd wanted to talk to her, it made him slightly nervous, but was an obvious fact he couldn't ignore. She'd been working again, though this time on her computer at home. She'd told him about creating design boards and 3D room mock ups for customers. They'd talked a lot about random things on Sunday too. He'd discovered she grew up in Bakersfield, she graduated high school in 2015, and had attended the local college as a double major to get bachelors degrees in both business and interior design. She loves dogs but has never owned one due to family members with severe allergies, and her favorite colors are pink and green. He'd filled her in on growing up in Australia, a few stories about his and Mali's adventures as kids, and some of the mundane stuff included in his career that isn't all glamor like people pretend it is.

On Monday he'd waited until the evening to message her, but it was the same six words, 'what are you doing right now?'. She'd send back a few laughing emojis before informing him that she'd just finished fixing herself some dinner after getting home from work. Her plan was to turn on some old reruns of something she'd watched a million times and disassociate for a bit to unwind. By the end of their conversation a couple hours later she admitted that the tv stayed off. She'd eaten her dinner at the counter and then curled up in bed talking to him instead. His chest had fluttered slightly at the idea of her forgoing her unusual nightly routine because she preferred talking to him.