Risk & Reward

Seven

June is generally a slow month for Shi, her regular clients all disappearing on vacations for a week or two as soon as their children finished school for the year. She has bits and pieces to work on for future projects but otherwise spends the time shopping for new products or relaxing. This year has become the exception, and in some ways she hopes it is the first month of many as hectic and full as the past two weeks had become.

She'd received the call early on a Monday morning, the week following the album drop, and nine days after Calum had started messaging her regularly (something she was still trying and failing to not overthink). A staging firm in Los Angeles had come across her work and asked her to make a portfolio of different room mockups to see if she may become a candidate for an opening she could only ever dream of being offered. She'd be helping to design sets for movies, tv shows, and even plays. It would be mostly remote work meaning she could continue to run the business she's already built for herself, and then be paid for drive or fly time to wherever they may need her for input. She'd called Tay immediately, panicking and stressing herself out over the prospect, but like any best friend Tay had reminded her that she'd earned this and she deserved to give it her all.

She'd spent the last two weeks neck deep in her research and sketches, making and deleting design boards and scouring the Internet and local stores for the perfect pieces to make this hypothetical portfolio and her real one as perfect as possible. More than once her answer to "what are you doing right now?" A question that appeared on her phone screen more than once a day anymore, has been "stress eating while I decide if dove gray is too close to the end of its trend cycle to use in this design board." Or something along the same lines. Calum seemed amused and in awe at times of what she was doing with her work, but she's felt similar to his talents through the last thirteen years so she can't really call him out on it.

Calum was a whole other issue she was trying to keep tucked away and out of the front of her brain. It is a feat far easier said than done. Part of her still feels as if she's being punked, as if Calum had set up a deliberate plan to string along a fan for a while and then disappear. But another part of her that is growing larger and louder by the day keeps saying this could be real, and it's getting harder and harder to suppress the fact that they are flirting, and she is very much enjoying the person she is getting to know.

Calum also happens to be a secret, Paul and Jess know she's maybe talking with someone, but that's it. She'd debated telling Tay on a number of occasions, but two things keep stopping her. One, admitting that she's flirting with their favorite bassist out loud will make it too real still. And Two, as much as she adores Tay and trusts her not to spill, that's a lot of pressure to put on a friend, keeping a secret that big when it may become nothing still. That one was holding her back a lot more the the first lately... So she holds it all in, drowning herself in iced coffees and work and keeping her giddy smiles hidden in her small apartment when Calum makes her laugh.

She'd woken up this morning planning to spend the holiday doing exactly what she'd done for weeks, work. The 4th of July hadn't been a holiday she enjoyed in ten years now, and avoiding all of the memories it brings back is the safest way to get through the week. Her plan was derailed when a single text appeared at the top of her phone screen while she was eating breakfast.

Erin
10am, please?

Erin didn't usually come down from the park between Memorial Day and Labor Day at all. So the fact that she'd asked to meet meant Shi had quickly jumped in the shower and dressed before heading across town.

***

Shi can see Erin as soon as she pulls into the cemetery, slowly creeping her Bronco up the small road until she can pull to the side, close to the big Sequoia tree, in the spot with the perfect amount of shade and a picturesque view of the mountains. Her friends blonde pixie cut is kept short and her skin evenly tanned from her summers spent as a Park Ranger up in the mountains.