Epistemic status: Speculation. An unholy union of evo psych, introspection, random stuff I happen to observe & hear about, and thinking. Done on a highly charged topic. Caveat emptor!
oh boy
archive: https://archive.is/uOP4y
Epistemic status: Speculation. An unholy union of evo psych, introspection, random stuff I happen to observe & hear about, and thinking. Done on a highly charged topic. Caveat emptor!
oh boy
archive: https://archive.is/uOP4y
Honestly this sounds like a great plot for a Hallmark movie.
Wouldn’t a Hallmark movie be about a young woman from the big city who finds love and fulfillment when she has to return to her small hometown and manage the local bakery, including the wacky antics of its mixed-sex staff?
There’s one guy she immediately doesn’t like. He has broad shoulders and dark stubble and he doesn’t trust her big city ways. “You don’t understand how we do things out here in Pastryton,” he tells her, when she demands the staff wear hairnets and stop making out over the macarons display. Then one day, he sees her struggling with the flour sifter and…
“Hey,” Blakeston said, “thought you could use a hand.” Rachel looked up from the flour sifter and her eyes widened. Blakeston was holding a large, complicated looking assemblage of tubes, with fans over one end. Could it be…
“You have a flour sifting accessory?” Rachel asked, her voice stunned. “Those are impossible to find!”
“I know,” Blakeston said, “it took weeks to find this one and another few weeks to fix it up. I just couldn’t see you struggling with the old flour sifter day after day. Here, I’ll set it up.” Rachel moved aside and Blakeston stepped in, straining as he pushed the assemblage into her flour sifter. His strong muscles glistened under the skin of his forearms. How have I never noticed that before? Rachel thought.
Blakeston stood up, assemblage complete, and turned the crank once - just once. The fans whirred, the tubes rattled, and just like that, the flour was sifted.
When Rachel got home that night, she didn’t check the feed of glitzy Pâtisserie Sophistiqué as she had every night since Diana Moon Clampers had stolen both her dream job & her man. Usually she sobbed over images of flaky, girlish choux pastry arranged by female pâtissières. One awful night there’d been a pic of Diana hoisting an exquisitely feminine mille-feuille—standing with Rachel’s ex Logan from their brother boulangerie, hoisting a manly baguette.
But tonight she thought only of Blake.
I’m only here for the love triangle episodes with the gruff but lovable bakery owner portrayed by Nathan Fillion who’s not yet over the heartbreak of his wife’s passing (crushed by unsifted flour) but I can fix him
But can you fix his pastry-related trauma? Since I hear he might join the mayor’s crusade against legalized gluten!
As Rachel unlocked the door to Chez Mixte the next day, she felt something different. At first, she couldn’t figure out what. Everything that had appeared antiquated and unsophisticated now had a special glow. She had once looked at pastries like Blake’s orteils de gopher, which had been setting overnight, and thought them no better than animal crackers. Now, they seemed full of animal passion.
For the first time, she picked one up and bit into it. Flaky, and Blake’s cream tasted so good on her tongue. Sweet, but not too sweet. A thought popped into her head. Blake had started posting gym selfies five weeks ago. That was about when he had started looking for a flour sifting accessory. Had he been trying to… impress her?
Rachel’s mind raced back to her last day in Manhattan, her sophisticated friends pleading with her not to go. “What’s out there for you?” cried Marcie. “Some flannel-wearing mountain man who doesn’t know a microplane from a microwave?”
Now Rachel couldn’t stop picturing Blake in his favorite flannel shirt, handling the cast iron æbleskiver pan as deftly as if it were made of aluminum, handing a fluffy pastry to little Olive Jones, the orphan in foster care who was peering in the bakery window.
I do actually have a favorite flannel, but it’s more of a light jacket than a shirt — very useful for dressing in layers.
we have much to learn about your Pastryton ways
Thinking about Rachel made Blake as hard as a Rubik’s Cube. But Rubik’s Cubes are only hard if you don’t know the trick, and Blake knew the trick. He could solve a Rubik’s Cube in 5.9 seconds. It was not the only thing Blake could do in 5.9 seconds, Rachel noted approving.
Blake couldn’t stop thinking about Rachel. He wanted to make a life-sized replica of her out of Legos, then take it apart piece by piece and put it back together, making it better. Maybe making her fifteen feet tall and able to shoot lasers out of her eyes. But not hotter. Blake didn’t know how to make her any hotter.
Why has my life lead up to being perfectly prepared to write parody Less Wrong romance fiction instead of something… I don’t know … beneficial to humanity?