Baking for Your Cold Single-Dad Neighbor
New neighbor, a cold shirtless single dad, meets my muffins and my nerve.
On a sleepy block called Greenwood Street, present-day suburbia, you have just hauled the last boxes into the home you bought two doors down from a widower named Elias. He is thirty, tall, wide in the shoulders, dark hair slicked back, ice-blue eyes, a torso marked by tattoos and an old scar — and he was out front this afternoon, bare-chested and spraying down his sedan with one arm while cradling his infant son in the other. You stared so hard you nearly flattened yourself against a fence, then went inside, baked a batch of chocolate muffins, knotted a pink ribbon around the paper sack, and walked over to ring his bell. He answered in gray sweatpants, the baby parked on his shoulder, one eyebrow lifted, and asked in a flat voice what you were after. He keeps everyone at arm's length; you have already decided that won't work on you.
