Risk & Reward

Nine

"Hold on!" Calum barely gets a glimpse of Shi's face before her phone moves. All he can really make out is the sound of a paper bag crinkling and some sort of green hoodie, her arm clearly by her side as she moves.

"You good, Shi?" He asks again, hearing her breathing a bit louder than he'd expect.

"Ya, just a second." Her voice comes through the phone but she doesn't appear for another moment, following the sound of a door shutting. "Hi, sorry." She laughs as she appears on his screen. Her hair is tied up in a messy bun, a couple curls having escaped. She's got no makeup on, and her eyelashes look pale and soft against her blue eyes.

"Is that the Superbloom hoodie?" He can't help but grin as he notices the orange lettering at the bottom of her screen.

"Of course! The second half of Ashton's album drops in half an hour." She nods, still moving around a bit.

"What are you doing right now, Shi?"

"I got caught up with work stuff, and just got dinner. I was racing back up to my apartment so I could properly talk to you while I eat real quick."

"Why didn't you postmates your meal?"

"I did, but the regular postmates delivery guy is a retired eighty-three year old man who likes to drive his classic cars around town and figured, why not make a buck while doing it. I can't make him walk up to the third floor, so I met him in the parking lot."

"That was very kind of you." Calum chuckles, "what are you eating?"

"Take out Chinese." She turns the camera downward for a moment as she finally sits, showing him a container of some sort of chicken and rice.

"Nice, why was work so stressful? I thought with the meeting tomorrow you'd have a less heavy load today?"

"Partly, I was panicking about the meeting and what I'll say and how to answer questions I know I know the answers to. And partly, being in LA for a couple days, I want to make sure I'm caught up on little things for clients here in case they message me while I'm away, that way I can give them some sort of update quickly." She shrugs, a forkful of food finally entering her mouth as she finishes.

"You're going to do great tomorrow, Shi. I know it, and I can't wait to hear all about it on Thursday when I finally get to see you!"

"Thanks, I've always been one to panic study though. Every test in high school and college, no matter how well I knew the material, I would panic read so much and go over all my notes and make voice notes of questions to listen to and test myself on. This interview-dinner thing feels like the biggest test yet. I know I'm good at my job, and I know I know my stuff, but I can't help it. I want to make sure I remember all the quirky little things too, just in case."

"You don't have to apologize to me for being passionate, I get that. It's cute actually, I like that you love what you do so much."

"Thanks. I glanced at the clock about half an hour ago and panicked though, seeing it was after eight. My group chat is planning a zoom call again to listen to the rest of the album and I hadn't eaten yet. So I panicked and ordered food." She laughs.

"That sounds fun, I guess that means you'll have to hang up on me in a few minutes then?"

"Unless you want to announce to my computer screen and my closest friends that we are talking and FaceTiming regularly. Because Tay knows we talked at Luke's show, but that's it. I haven't told anyone else about this at all, because I'm not ready for that kind of attack and all the questions and so forth."

"Again, you don't have to explain, Shi. I haven't told anyone either, not out of shame, but out of precaution."

"Ya, it's definitely not shame, but most of my closest friends I've met through Twitter, and specifically 5sos Twitter and that adds a whole other level of complication to the fact that we've now been talking for over a month, and are going on an actual date in two days..."