Something New (A Chris Evans Story)

Chapter Ten

As the summer quickly turned to autumn, Shanna had started to become more and more busy. With my erratic and unpredictable timings at the hospital and her schedule at the school, I hadn't seen her as often as I wanted to.

But since Chris was spending his time off in Boston, he had started to become a bigger part of my life. He'd text me all the time when I was on my late and overnight shifts in the hospital, since he was more of a night owl than his sister.

Sometimes when he couldn't fall asleep, he'd call me when I got time off from work and we'd talk about all sorts of things - from the latest albums that he'd heard to the latest astronomy discoveries, all of which he would geek out about. We would just stay on the phone together until one of us ending up falling asleep on the other.

Often, during a shift, my phone would be light up with notifications of random texts and cute puppy photos and videos. The other residents that I worked with would often ask why I randomly laughed while looking at my phone during breaks.

He was such an adorable nerd, and I was never bored with him around.

Nowadays, he'd just started to come over and spend time at my apartment whenever I'd have a day off after a night shift, especially since Ananth was spending less time at my place because he had made friends at his school.

But nothing actually ever happened; like everyone always says, we were still just friends.

Apparently we had reached that point in our friendship where he invited me over to his house at this ungodly hour on my day off. I had to down two cups of coffee before even getting into my car.

This had better be good. I let myself into the house with the spare key Shanna had given me in case of emergencies.

"Chris! Where are you?"

"Come upstairs!" I heard a muffled yell from the second floor of the house.

Trudging up the staircase, I walked to his room near the end of the hallway. But when I pushed the door open, I found a completely empty bedroom.

Weird, I could've sworn that I heard his voice come from his room.

Suddenly I felt a pair of lips almost graze my ear as a deep voice echoed, "Boo."

I yelped, jumping a foot or so in the air. When my erratic heartbeat had calmed down slightly, I stopped clutching my chest.

Turning, I began to give him a piece of my mind. "Goddamn it, Chris, stop being so much like Shanna and scaring-"

Well, even if he acted like Shanna, he most definitely did not look like her.

There, in front of me, was a shirtless Chris, dressed only in a pair of heavy duty jeans. God this was the second time I saw him without clothes: why did he always end up naked in front of me?

Not that I was complaining much about the eye candy.

Gaping for a millisecond, I then subtly tried to avert my gaze so I wouldn't be looking at his defined upper body. I could be calm in this type of situation.

He looked like he was dying to say something to diffuse the awkwardness, but he was holding himself back.

Strange. Come to think of it, this happened a lot whenever we hung out, as if he wasn't the Chris that I had come to know.

I needed our conversations to not be so damn stilted all the time.

"You know, this is too damn weird. Flirt all you want, I can't hold you back. It's too weird when you're not being your normal, flirty self."