The Baker
"Her cinnamon rolls are legendary. What happens in the back room is better."
The bakery opens at 5 AM.
I know because I'm there every morning at 5:01, first customer through the door, standing in a shop that smells like heaven and feels like home.
Helga's Sweet Things has been on this corner for forty years. Same recipes. Same hand-painted sign. Same woman behind the counter, covered in flour, offering samples with a smile that could end wars.
Helga Brenner. Sixty-four years old. Built like the pastries she makes—round and soft and golden, with arms like bread dough and a bosom that arrives five seconds before the rest of her. Her hair is steel-gray, always up in a practical bun, and her cheeks are permanently flushed from years of working near ovens.
I've been in love with her since the first morning I stumbled in, hungover and starving, and she handed me a fresh croissant without asking for money.
"You look like you need this," she'd said.
I did. I still do.
"Daniel! My favorite early bird."
She greets me the same way every morning. I order the same thing—coffee, black, and whatever she recommends. Today it's an apple strudel still warm from the oven.
"Eat, eat." She watches me take the first bite. "Good?"
"Incredible. As always."
"You flatter me." But she's pleased. I can tell by the way she ducks her head, by the pink that spreads across her cheeks beyond their usual flush.
The shop fills slowly behind me. Regulars, mostly—elderly couples, night shift workers, parents grabbing breakfast before school drop-off. Helga knows them all by name, knows their orders, knows their children's grades and their parents' health problems.
I linger as long as I can before work. It's become ritual.
"You're here more than you're at home, I think." She says it one morning, after the rush has faded and we're alone. "Every day for three months. Same time, same table."
"Can't resist your cooking."
"Hmm." She studies me. "Most young men your age, they resist quite easily. They go to Starbucks. They eat protein bars." She waves a flour-dusted hand. "They don't sit in an old woman's bakery eating strudel like it's medicine."
"Maybe I'm not most young men."
"No." Her eyes—pale blue, keen despite the wrinkles around them—hold mine. "No, I don't think you are."
Something passes between us. Something I don't dare name.
She breaks the moment, turning back to her work. "Well. Whoever you're escaping from, you're welcome here. Immer."
I don't tell her I'm not escaping from anyone. I'm escaping to her.
I start offering to help.
It begins small—carrying in flour deliveries, moving heavy equipment she shouldn't lift alone. She protests, but not too hard. She's been running this place solo since her husband passed ten years ago, and the work is catching up to her.
"You should hire someone," I tell her one evening. I've stayed past closing, helping her clean.
"I've tried. They don't last. They don't care." She scrubs a baking sheet with more force than necessary. "They treat it like a job. Like punching a clock. They don't understand that every loaf, every pastry—it's a piece of me. It's—" She stops, embarrassed by her own passion.
"It's love," I finish.
She looks at me sharply. "Yes. Exactly. It's love." She sets down the sheet. "How do you understand that? You're what—twenty-eight? Twenty-nine? Your generation doesn't—"
"Twenty-seven. And I understand because I see you." I move closer to her, close enough to smell the flour and yeast and warm sugar that cling to her skin. "I see how you touch every loaf. How you taste every batch. How your whole face lights up when a customer enjoys what you've made."
"Daniel—"
"Let me help you. Really help. Not as a customer—as a partner."
The word hangs between us, heavier than I intended.
"A partner." She's laughing, but there's something fragile beneath it. "At my age? With my body?" She gestures at herself—at the apron straining over her belly, the thick arms, the heavy breasts. "I'm not what men want as a partner, Daniel."
"You're exactly what I want."
The laughing stops.
"You don't mean that."
"I've spent three months finding excuses to be near you. I rearranged my work schedule to make your opening. I dream about you—about your hands, your voice, the way you smell." I'm baring everything now, heart laid out like dough on a board. "I know it's crazy. I know you probably think I'm insane. But I can't pretend anymore."
She stares at me. Her eyes are wet.
"I'm sixty-four years old."
"I know."
"I weigh more than you do."
"I know."
"I have varicose veins and arthritis and I can't—I can't be what you need, Daniel. I can't give you children or a normal life or—"
I kiss her.
She tastes like cinnamon and sugar and home.
For a moment she's frozen—shocked, unresponsive. Then her hands come up to my face, flour-covered palms against my cheeks, and she kisses me back with forty years of loneliness behind it.
"Mein Gott," she breathes when we part. "Daniel—"
"Tell me you don't want this." I hold her face, make her look at me. "Tell me honestly, and I'll walk away. I'll never mention it again. But tell me the truth."
Tears spill down her cheeks. "I want it. God help me, I've wanted it since the first morning you walked in. But it's impossible—"
"Nothing's impossible."
"I'm old—"
"You're beautiful."
"I'm fat—"
"You're magnificent."
I kiss her again. And again. And again, until her protests dissolve into sighs and her hands stop pushing me away and start pulling me closer.
We make it to the back room somehow. Past the ovens, past the proofing racks, to the small office where she does her books and, apparently, keeps a battered couch for afternoon naps.
She's hesitant—embarrassed about her body, about the rolls and folds she's spent a lifetime hiding beneath aprons and loose dresses. I don't let her hide. I undress her slowly, worshipfully, kissing every inch of skin I reveal.
"You don't have to—" she starts.
"I want to." I kneel before her, press my lips to the soft swell of her belly. "I've wanted to for months."
She moans when I reach between her thighs. Wet already—slick and swollen, her body betraying her protests. I part her folds with my fingers, find her clit, and watch her face transform.
"Daniel—oh—oh—"
She comes embarrassingly fast. Her hands grip my shoulders hard enough to bruise, and she shakes against me, gasping in German, words I don't understand but feel in my chest like prayer.
"Wunderschön," she pants when it fades. "Beautiful. You are beautiful."
"So are you." I stand, lift her—she's heavy but I'm strong, and the surprise on her face is worth the effort. "Now. Let me show you how much."
I take her on the couch, her bulk beneath me, surrounding me, making the narrow space feel infinite.
She's tight—tighter than I expected—and hot, and when I push inside her she makes a sound like coming home after a long journey. I go slow at first, feeling her adjust, watching her face for any sign of discomfort.
"More," she demands. Her hands find my ass, pull me deeper. "More."
I give her more.
We fuck surrounded by the smell of bread and butter and rising dough, the sounds of our bodies mixing with the hum of refrigerators and the distant tick of oven timers. Her body ripples with each thrust, breasts bouncing, belly soft against mine, and I've never felt more consumed by another person in my life.
"Don't stop—" she gasps. "Please—bitte—don't stop—"
"Never." I mean it. "Never stopping."
She comes again—clenching around me, crying out in a voice hoarse with disuse—and I follow, spilling into her, marking her, claiming her in the only way I can.
We lie on the narrow couch afterward, tangled together like dough braids.
"This is insane," she says.
"Probably."
"People will talk."
"Let them."
"Your family—"
"Doesn't get a vote."
She laughs—incredulous, wet with tears. "What am I going to do with you?"
"Keep me." I tighten my arms around her. "Let me work here. Let me learn your recipes. Let me wake up at 4 AM and help you bake and then take you back here and do this until we're both too tired to move."
"That's not a life plan. That's a fantasy."
"Then let it be a fantasy." I kiss her forehead. "I'm tired of realistic, Helga. I'm tired of doing what I'm supposed to do. Let me have this. Let me have you."
She's quiet for a long time. When she speaks, her voice is small.
"I make the cinnamon rolls. You're on bread duty."
I smile against her hair. "Deal."
That was three years ago.
Helga and Daniel's Sweet Things opens at 5 AM now. The sign has been repainted. The menu has expanded. The line out the door on Saturday mornings wraps around the block.
"Your secret?" customers ask. "What makes it so good?"
Helga smiles and says it's the family recipes. I smile and say it's the love.
We don't tell them about the back room. About the couch that's been upgraded to a proper bed. About the afternoons between lunch and dinner crowds when the ovens cool and we heat up in other ways.
Some ingredients are secret for a reason.
Helga's Sweet Things.
Open daily.
Come for the pastries.
Stay for the love.