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[hider=Morning by Beck][youtube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UvKbBkiYN9Y[/youtube][/hider]


Aaron Chandler woke up at six AM to the gentle buzzing of his alarm. He sat upright and took in a deep breath. Sunlight streamed into the room through the slats of the wooden blinds. Gently he untangled himself from his sheets and slipped into his moccasins. The old wooden floor creaked as he stood and looked around the small square bedroom. He turned to the bed and ripped the sheets off to be washed. He folded them carefully, placed them in the hamper, and then pulled a second set of sheets, this one a nice wine color, out of a chestnut drawer. 

After replacing the sheets, he walked into the bathroom, where he urinated and then showered in cool water. Some days, Aaron wished he could take hot showers like he did when he was a kid, but it was one of those pleasures of life that he knew he could live without. After showering, Aaron stepped out of the shower, meticulously dried himself off, and brushed his teeth for exactly two and half minutes. He flossed, rinsed with mouthwash, and then washed his face with cold water. He dressed in a white button-down shirt, a tweed vest, and khakis. He left his bedroom and walked down the main hallway of the rectangular flat to the kitchen, where he fried up two eggs and a pancake. Aaron used to use bacon as part of his morning routine, but he decided he was going to cut some red meat out of his diet to better his life expectancy. As he sat down for breakfast, Aaron turned on the radio to 105.7, The Baybridge Sound. As usual, the most popular morning talk show in Baybridge came in through the crackling radio speakers. 

[indent][i]”G-g-g-good morning Baybridge! This is your OG DJ Rebel Diamond with your Morning on the Rocks! Weather today’s looking fine with highs in the mid 60s and sunny skies! How’s your day going Baybridge? Call in and let me know! Now it’s time for your first rocking song of the day! Let’s start off with a brand new track off of my boy Ed Sheeran’s new album Divide!” [/i][/indent] 

The radio suddenly cut out into a storm of static. Startled, Aaron dropped his fork and dove for the radio. He fiddled with the antenna for a few moments and turned the knob back and forth until the radio cut back in. 

“This goddamned radio,” Aaron muttered. “I should really go buy a new one.” He finished his breakfast silently, with the radio humming in the background.” 

[indent][i] “Good morning Baybridge! Just reminding all of y’all listeners out there that me and DJ Smokes from More After Four will be at The Golden Throne tonight, a kickass club in Fallbridge Plaza! We’ll be signing autogra-”[/i][/indent] 

Aaron turned off the radio and put his dishes in the sink. He washed them in hot water and placed them carefully onto the drying rack. He left the kitchen, slipped into his brown oxfords, and turned off every light in the apartment. As he walked down the stairs to the first floor of his building, he crossed off a day on his calendar with a black sharpie. This was the 695th day in a row that he’d lived his life following almost that exact morning routine. Thinking about that made Aaron quite satisfied. 

At 8:20 AM, Aaron walked out of the back door of The Chandlery and walked to church. He attended the 8:30 AM mass at St.Andrew’s Roman Catholic Church. He sat in the third row, in the same spot that he sat in every week. When church was over, he took a bulletin and walked back to the store to open up shop. He read the church bulletin on his way home. 

[hr] 

The rest of the morning passed in the exact same way that it had for the last 695 days, barring holidays and one three-day vacation trip to San Francisco. He walked into his shop, said good morning to Katie, his cashier. She was a slim, tall blonde-haired woman who shared Aaron’s dislike of large spaces and large amounts of people. From the bottom of the stairs, he turned left and walked into his workshop.

The Chandlery, as the store was called, was a small candle store on an old commercial street in Roseview. It was wooden and rustic, with beige walls and walnut floors that were impeccably clean. The store was long and rectangular, about fifteen feet wide and twenty feet long, with walls covered in cabinets and shelves that held dozens of different candles. Every candle in the store was beautifully designed, covered in beautiful engravings or in well-made mason jars. Several small tables in the interior of the room held wax sculptures and metal candle brackets. The front was glass, with wooden double doors and a small canopy over the front. The words “The Chandlery: Homemade Candles and gifts” hung over the canopy in silver cursive letters. 

Aaron walked into his workshop and took out a yellow legal pad from a drawer. The workshop was roughly square and was impeccably clean, with everything in its exact place. A long marble countertop stretched the center of the room and covered the exterior of the room. At the end of the counter in the middle of the room, a laptop held the list of orders that needed to be completed today. Most of these orders were from rich citizens of Baybridge who wanted custom candles for their homes or from societies who wanted candles for banquets. There were five custom orders today, a grand total of one hundred candles that needed to be custom-made. Aaron took a large block of wax out of a cupboard near the door and sat it down on the countertop. One hundred candles of this detail would take him...an hour, maybe two. 



The store stayed open from 11 to 6, just as it did every Sunday. The day was exactly as Aaron expected it to be. He worked until noon making candles, finishing all of the custom orders in the process, and ate a turkey sandwich in his kitchen at exactly noon. During lunch, he listened to the radio and looked out of his kitchen window at the landscape of Roseview. His store was on a busy street just east of Rosemaple Lake, so when he ate every day he could watch the waves bob the boats up and down on the small lake. After lunch, he went back downstairs and worked on stock for the shop for two hours, making about one hundred-twenty candles to add to the stock. Everyone he knew, from employees to regular customers, were absolutely baffled by the speed at which Aaron worked. No one knew his true secret, of course, as he didn’t talk about it, but some customers had figured it out over time. 

For a few hours, he worked the cash register while Katie stocked shelves and cleaned the store. A few regulars came in, to which Aaron said hello and talked with briefly, and some new faces showed up to browse the shop’s impressive selection of wares. He talked with one or two of them briefly who complimented his craftsmanship, and only dodged one question all day about how he made candles so fast. It was the kind of calm and predictable day that Aaron loved to have. 

At six PM sharp, Aaron turned the sign on the door from “opened” to “closed”. Katie left through the back door a half hour later, after she and Aaron cleaned the shop. Aaron left the front door of the Chandlery at 6:51 PM, locked it behind him, and walked down to [i]The Cool Beans[/i], a small coffee shop on the corner of the street. Like The Chandlery, it was a rustic and well-kept place, with wooden walls and mason jars filled with freshly-baked organic cake pops. He sat in his usual seat in the corner, just past the storefront window, and had his usual medium green tea latte. He browsed Reddit while he drank his coffee in pleasant, relaxing silence. Little did Aaron know that this latte would mark the beginning of the worst night he would have in the last 696 days. 


[i]7:05 PM[/i] 

At [i]The Cool Beans[/i] worked a woman named Lily. Lily was a short pale redhead, a college hipster who worked part time on weekdays to pay for her graphic art degree at the Roseview College of the Arts. Lily also had a crush on Aaron Chandler, and today she would finally get up the courage to make a move and ask him out. She stood behind the counter, her arms crossing her chest, her face sheet white and sweaty. She watched him sip his coffee and smile in that reserved, fleeting way that made her heart jump with delight. Sarah, another worker at the shop, leaned her back against the wall of coffee grounds behind her and put a hand on Lily’s shoulder. Her grey beanie nearly touched the blackboard on which was written the day’s specials. 

“I’m telling you, Lil,” Sarah said. “He’s gay. It’s [i]soooo[/i] obvious!” 

“You don’t know! He could be straight or bi!” Lily whispered angrily. 

“Lil! He runs a candle shop! The only thing that would make him scream ‘raging homosexual’ any louder would be if he ran a boutique!” Lily frowned and looked down at the tip jar. Her and Sarah had a fifty dollar bet running on whether or not Aaron was gay. 

“He could be bi!” Both girls laughed together. Aaron looked up from his latte and then quickly back down. He suspected the girls behind the counter talked about him some days, but confronting them would draw way too much attention to him so he let it slide. He looked at his watch. Soon he would go back home and finish making the eggplant parmesan that he had done the prep work for the night before. Then, he figured, he would eat dinner, watch the Verthaven Sharks play, maybe read a book, and then go to bed at exactly 11 PM to get his full eight hours of sleep. As he looked up from his watch, Lily and Sarah approached his table. Lily looked nervous about something. She put her hands on her hips and tapped her fingers when she was nervous, he had noticed over the past few months. 

“Uh, hello,” Aaron said. 

“Hey, Aaron,” Lily said. She sounded very nervous. “H-how’s it going?” Aaron didn’t like people being nervous. It gave him anxiety. 

“It’s going okay, I guess. Can I help you with something?” He asked. He leaned back in his chair to keep the sunlight from hitting his skin. He could feel beads of sweat form on his forehead. Quickly he wiped them away with a napkin. 

“Uh, yeah actually,” Lily paused and looked at Sarah, who smiled at her smugly. “So, you listen to Rebel Diamond in the morning, right?” 

“Uh, yeah. I do most days. He’s cool.” Aaron inhaled and sighed. [i] ‘I don’t have a reason to be nervous,’[/i] he thought. 

“Cool! I’m a really big fan of his. He’s doing a guest DJ and signing tonight at a club called The Golden Throne. I won two guest passes to get in cover-free and see him perform. I was gonna take Sarah, but she can’t get off work.” 

“Yeah, no way,” Sarah said awkwardly. She looked like she really wanted to laugh. 

“So, uh, would you, like, wanna go with me?” Aaron’s eyes went wide. She wants to go to a club, a nightclub, one that will be filled with people. Aaron hated being around large groups of people. 

“Uh,” Aaron stammered. “Uh, yeah, I’m not sure that’s the best idea. I don’t really like clubs all that much. Places with lots of people make me nervous, and my psychologist says that it’s not good for my health…” 

“I mean, there won’t be that many people there, I think,” Lily replied. “It is a Sunday, after all. Like, it’ll probably just be the normal amount of people that are in a restaurant most times.” Aaron wiped his forehead again. He could feel the waxy sweat beads form. Sarah looked like she was about to explode. Lily’s eyes looked down and the put her hands in her lap. “I guess if you don’t want to go with me, though, that’s okay,” she said. 

“Uh, uh no, it’s not that,” Aaron said. “I just,” Aaron stopped mid-sentence and looked down at his cup. After a short few seconds that felt like longer, he looked back up at Lily, who looked like she was either going to laugh or cry. Sarah had walked a few steps away and was heaving with silent laughter. Aaron felt extremely embarrassed. He didn’t want the workers at [i]The Cool beans[/i] to hate him, though, so he decided he would at least go for a little bit. 

“I guess I can go,” Aaron said. “I don’t have any other plans tonight, and I guess going someplace new would be fun.” [i] ‘No it won’t. It really won’t. Oh God, this is going to suck.’ [/i] Aaron thought. Lily’s face lit up in a brilliant smile. 

“Um, awesome!” She jumped a little into the air. Sarah turned around and looked at her, shocked. Realizing how stupid she looked, Lily stopped jumping and crossed her arms back across her chest. “I mean, yeah. Cool. Wanna meet up at eight?” 

“Uh, sure. Yeah,” Aaron said. “I’ll, uh, go get ready. I need to do some laundry and check on some candelabrum orders. I’ll, see you in a bit.” The two smiled at each other awkwardly and then Lily walked away. She bumped into Sarah on the way back to the counter. 

“You owe me fifty bucks,” Lily said with a big ol’ smirk on her face. Aaron left the coffee shop and walked back to the Chandlery, wondering on the way there about what one wears to go clubbing.