Phases

Future

Pulling his t-shirt over his head, Aiden dismissed a recurring thought of Casse. Her amazing hair. Her full beautiful lips and huge medium brown eyes set in perfect darker than tanned skin. Her roving eye. He shook his head. He had to stop. He turned on the tv in the bedroom, more for the noise than the information and began to do his nightly routine. Push ups, sit ups and burpees. Standard bedtime routine, which was always followed by a sandwich or cookies.

"All things in moderation." Aiden flexed his well toned body as he spoke to his reflection on his way into the kitchen.

Having finished his dinner/sandwich and found only one cookie left in the pack, Aiden pushed all of the days garbage into a grocery bag and headed for the door. His reason for moving into the building was once again brought to the front of his mind. He was once again thinking about the meeting he'd had earlier arguing over improvements.  He wanted to install garbage shoots on all of the floors. As it was, every other floor had them. Walking into the hall in his slippers, he headed for the shoot which was located beside the elevator. Improving on this building would be easy, it wasn't too bad to begin with. It was still in pretty good shape, which was much more than he had hoped for when his father gave it to him. The tenants seemed to be pretty okay with everything, which really only meant they weren't complaining loudly. He'd moved in to see for himself and thankfully, also had no real complaints. Maybe dear old Dad, hadn't set him up too badly.

Aiden stopped and sniffed deeply. What on earth was that?

Someone was cooking...no, baking. Someone was baking something. His one, lonely cookie seemed like it had made its disappointing trip down into his stomach ages ago.

"No choice but to order in." He decided. He was too hungry now to sleep. He didn't know what the smell was, or where it was coming from...but it had gotten his appetite going. Dropping his rubbish down the hatch, he breathed deeply on his way back to his apartment, trying to decide what to order.

Music poured into the hall as Casse's door opened. She propped it with a shoe and headed for the garbage shoot. Dusting flour off of her over-sized nightshirt and singing along to her favorite mix of Bollywood movie songs, she didn't even look up.

Watching her mixture of dancing, walking and dusting, Aiden stepped out of her way when she got to the shoot, twirling with her eyes shut. She pushed her bag in and spun dramatically, did a hand twist, a hip shake, a weak attempt at the choreo and started back to her apartment.

The smell was pouring out with the music.

"Are you baking?"

Aiden's deep voice made her jump, and almost turn... almost. She remembered that she was essentially naked and kept her back to him.

"Yes. I'm working on a new recipe." She tried to speed walk to her door without letting her body move too much.

"It smells great..." He left the sentence open, hoping she'd get the hint.

"Thank you..." Almost to the door.

"I was just throwing away today's garbage. Could have done it yesterday...didn't realize there was only one cookie left in the pack..." He didn't know how far he'd have to go, but he wanted to taste whatever was smelling up the hallway.

"Just one cookie, huh...?" Her walking had slowed. He walked back toward his apartment, thankful he had to pass hers along the way. 

"Yup, store bought." He could see her wavering.

She shook her head in disapproval. She really didn't like store bought cookies unless they were made in the deli...then they were more like homemade.