"You got everything?"

Don looked down at Aiden as they stood at the Amtrak station, waiting for his train. Maddie and Danny had loaded the girls into their car earlier that day and headed back to New York. Stella and Sheldon had followed suit shortly after, but Don had been unable to get as many days off of work as the lab personnel and had taken the train down alone, departing now the same way.

He took her hand in his and smiled softly. Everything but you. "Yeah, I think so," he answered. "But if I forgot anything, I'll get it the next time I see you."

She smiled back, half playfully, half girlishly. Soon, I hope. "Okay."

A voice over the loudspeaker announced boarding procedures and Don fished his ticket out of his pocket, releasing Aiden's hand to heft his suitcase. "That's me."

She nodded. "Okay," she repeated. "Call me when you get home so I know you made it."

"I will," he promised with a grin. He leaned down and brushed his lips gently over cheek, feeling a tingle on the back of his neck where her fingers slid across his skin in response. "Bye Aid."

"Bye Donny," she smiled, reciprocating with a butterfly kiss to his temple.

He took one last look at her before sighing internally and boarding the train, locating his seat and situating himself next to the window. He rested his head against the pane, banging his temple against the glass when the train lurched forward a few minutes later. Sliding a large hand under his chin, he drifted off into a sea of thought as scenery flew by.

Is Aiden going to take the job at UVA and stay in Charlottesville? Or is she going to come back home to New York…to me… Does she even still want me?

He replayed their good-bye kiss over again in his head, feeling her lips on his temple, her hand caressing the back of his neck. He could sense her affection and warmth, knew how much she cared for him. And since she had come to Virginia, he and Aiden had managed to repair most of the holes in their relationship. But it had remained strictly platonic—neither of them had ever even mentioned a possible rekindling of their romance.

But I bet we're both thinking about it. I know I sure am.

He blew out a breath and shifted in his seat. He loved her. Plain and simple in theory, but in reality it was anything but. She had once confessed to Stella in an e-mail that Don was the love of her life, "the One" as she had put it.

But does she still feel that way? Her kiss says maybe she does, but the rest of the time she acts like she did before we got involved with each other, when we were just friends. And if she stays in Virginia, I might never know for sure. But if she gives up that job and comes back to New York, I still might never know for sure. We might not ever get past where we are now.

He sighed, stretching out and laying his head back against the seat, remembering what it had been like to have her curled up beside him, her long hair tickling his bare arms, her breathing falling into quite rhythm with his own.

Or we could end up so much closer…

∞∞∞

Mac sat at his desk, tiredly flipping through the stack of applications that Human Resources had sent over. The city had finally approved the funding to hire three new lab techs after he had begged for a minimum of five at the last appropriations meeting, and now it was up to him and the shift supervisors to figure out which three made the cut.

"Okay, so who's first?" the day shift leader asked, making himself comfortable in a chair across from the desk.

"Here," Mac answered handing him the applications. "I figure once we separate out the contenders it'll only take us a few days to conduct the interviews. Then we can get this mess over with as soon as possible and get these people in the lab."

"Good," the night guy replied. "If the run time on DNA samples gets any longer, my grandchildren will be picking up the results."

"You ain't kiddin'," the swing shift supervisor agreed, shaking her head. "So who's first in the pile?"

The four CSIs went through every application together as a group, discussing the pros and cons of each candidate, then placing the application in one of the piles designated "yes", "no", and "maybe".

"Okay, the next one is…" The day shift supervisor plucked an application from the pile in his lap and held it up. "Baker, Dantrell Jerome."

"Isn't that the kid that Messer's always braggin' about?" his counterpart on nights wondered.

"Yeah, that's him. The way Danny goes on about him, you'd think the kid was his own flesh and blood."

"You know him, too, don't you Mac?" the swing shift leader asked.

Mac nodded. "For about five years now. He was Maddie Messer's student when he was in high school and stood up in her wedding when she and Danny were married."

"And you think you should recuse yourself, don't you?" the swing shift supervisor continued.

Mac nodded again.

"Do you need to?" the day shift guy queried. "I mean, really Mac. If anyone can be impartial despite a connection with an applicant, it's you."

"Yeah," the night shift manager chimed in. "And you can give us some background on this kid. We can actually make a more informed decision about him."

"You're sure it doesn't bother you that I know him?" Mac asked just to be clear. All three supervisors shook their heads. "Okay. What do you want to know?"

"Just tell us about him," the day shift leader decided. "We have the general stuff here on the app, but we need to know the kinds of things that aren't there."

Mac leaned back in his chair and allowed his mind to wander back five years to the day he met Dantrell. He remembered being struck by the look in the boy's eyes, finding determination and intelligence mixed with just a touch of desperation to get out of a bad situation. Dantrell wanted a better life, for himself if possible and certainly for his family. It was the same look Danny had worn when he first stepped into Mac's office, right down to the developing sense of justice behind it all. And neither of them had ever lost that.

The expression on Mac's face softened, and he found himself becoming a bit sentimental despite his efforts not to. "You want to know what kind of man he is? When you meet him, you'll know…"

∞∞∞

That good-bye kiss reminds me of the first time I kissed Don…

Aiden sat on the floor in her living room, smiling as the memory came back to her. It had been their second date, because their first date had ended rather badly when Danny was shot interrupting a robbery. A week later he'd been released from the hospital and had asked Aiden to take him to Eastside High School's graduation ceremony to patch things up with Maddie. Aiden had dutifully complied, picking Don up on the way and bringing him along.

Her smile grew, her mind's eye watching her sit beside Don in the bleachers at the school, grinning with glee when Maddie and Danny picked their way through the crowd, hand-in-hand.

"Look, they made up!"

"So draggin' me all the way over here was worth it, then?"

She had leaned over and kissed him in response, softly on the cheek, like she'd done it a hundred times before.

"Absolutely."

Aiden laughed out loud as she remembered the utter shock on Don's face that day. He had recovered quickly, though, and responded with a kiss of his own.

Just like at the train station, she thought, her smile fading a bit. Soft and warm and loving…if I wasn't already in love with him before, I fell for him that moment in the bleachers. No man kisses like that unless he really means it, and Don always kissed me like that.

Her smile flexed into a frown as another thought invaded her mind. I wonder if he'll ever kiss me like again…

"Not if I take the job here in Charlottesville," she said aloud, lolling her head back against the couch. "If I stay in Virginia, I'll pretty much be giving him the old heave-ho. 'Sorry, Donny, I know I said I'd always love you, but I got bigger fish to fry'," she mocked.

Then she tried a different tack. "Maybe he'd understand," she reasoned hopefully. "Maybe he'd even move down here to be near me."

She sighed and covered her face with her hands, her body slumping lower to the floor and her fingers sliding up through her hair. "Yeah, and maybe I'll get drafted by the Giants as a middle linebacker," she snorted. "He wouldn't leave New York…his job, all the people closest to him…"

She sighed again, loudly this time, and hoisted herself off the floor. Pacing around the room, she continued to talk the problem out. "Okay, let's be rational about this—how 'bout a pro/con list? Charlottesville, pros: good job that's in my field of study, good salary, decent benefits, warmer winters, nice little apartment, way lower cost of living, nice new friends, good memories." She reached the end of the living room and spun around, gaining momentum as she spoke. "Charlottesville cons…" She stopped mid-step, the volume of her voice dropping to almost a whisper. "Charlottesville cons: it's not New York."

She plopped down into the nearest chair as realization washed over her. "I want to go back," she knew. "Not just for Don, but all my family and friends…because it's home, no matter how much I like living in other places."

Aiden shook her head a little and laughed. "I guess my darling brother Benny gets his wish then…I'll move in with him and wait tables at the diner until I find something else. But," she grinned, feeling the happiness spread through her heart, "I'll be home."

She kicked her feet up on the ottoman and imagined walking through her old neighborhood, through Central Park, down the Brooklyn Heights Promenade, looking out over the water in a hundred different places. She pictured herself cooking dinner with her brother, going to the movies with Stella, babysitting for Maddie and Danny.

And she knew she had made the right choice.

∞∞∞

Sheldon stood in the "back room" of the Crime Lab, holding his timecard in one hand as he stared at the punch clock on the wall. He went through the same process each time he began a shift, had done so every day since she left, but it never got any easier.

I miss her so much.

It had been over a year since Sarah had broken up with him, but he thought of her every time he punched his timecard. She had been right when she said that he was a workaholic, that he put his job ahead of her. And true to form, he had thrown himself into his work after the breakup, working double shifts as often as he could to keep his mind focused on something other than how much he hurt. Then he'd go out on a call and find himself scanning sidewalks and streets, corridors in buildings, windows, crowds of people, looking for her.

You'd think that in all the places I've been to on crime scene runs in this city, I'd have at least caught a glimpse of her. But I guess in a city of eight million people, it's easy to hide.

Especially when you knew the person you were hiding from as well as Sarah knew Sheldon. The places he shopped, the restaurants where he ate, the building he worked in, even the route he liked to run to keep himself in shape—she knew them all well, making it almost effortless for her to avoid him.

Which is why it's been a year since I've seen her. A year without talking to her, touching her, kissing her, holding her…

He frowned at the time clock, the wrinkle forming on the bridge of his nose that appeared whenever he was concentrating on something—the same wrinkle that Sarah had always told him was so cute, and would kiss with a grin.

I wonder if I'll ever see her again.

This was the part of the ritual where he felt a little sorry for himself. Danny and Maddie were happily married, Stella and Mac had forged a strong relationship, and even Don and Aiden had become friends again. But he and Sarah were still apart. Sometimes he'd speculate about her life. Was she still cooking? She had loved that as much as she'd loved him. Did she still living in the same apartment she'd had? There had been a flower shop just around the corner that had carried her favorite type of rose.

Is she with someone else now?

He tilted his head to the side in a movement designed to kick-start his brain and dispel the self-pity, shoving his timecard into the clock and listening to the machine stamp the time in the proper place.

"Back to work," he muttered wryly. "Duty calls."