David Miles and Richter Layover are young lovers from West Hollywood who move to Snowden to open a liberal and fun bakery called Cupcakes. What follows is a string of extraordinary men who enter their lives and change their matrimony and the bakery forever. Realtor Anthony Jarr, handsome and alluring, who lives above Cupcakes and considers himself an exceptional lover. When he meets Ryan Glayson, a professional cellist with a relentless urge for sweets, Jarr falls in love for the first time, turning his life into a topsy-turvy spin of surprising romance and selflessness. The magnetic and strange Stefan Pavlov is one of Cupcakes' regulars. Although he comes across as being sweet and charming, he has secrets that are quite damaging, which are exposed during a heated summer along the lake. Erich Misslow, a part-time employee at Cupcakes, becomes enamored with Pavlov, who is almost three times his age. Erich has always enjoyed the company of older men, but does Pavlov have too much peculiar baggage to share? Cupcakes also draws in Ken Eclipse, a charming underwear model with a taste for sweet men and sultry sex. Eclipse searches for Mr. Right like a slice of cinnamon cake for his appetite and personal needs. Can he find the man of his dreams at Cupcakes, or will he forever be single, enjoying the bakery's treats alone? These employees, friends, and lovers combine together with their individual recipes of bliss and loss, and the little bakery called Cupcakes comes to life as the sugary flavor of a gay neighborhood along the lake bursts into life.

Cupcakes

I packed an overnight bag and spent the night with Jarr in his apartment. Half of me believed that Richter would come and rescue me in his arms like a noble prince, but the letter I had left for him on our dining room table instructed him not to.


Leave Me Alone. I’m With Jarr. Don’t Come And Find Me.


Jarr soothed me on his sofa, feeding me chamomile tea and smiling sugar cookies from the bakery. He said he was worried about me, and couldn’t possibly begin to understand how or why Richter was having an affair on me. “You two are rocks. There isn’t anything wrong in your lives. Why is this happening when your marriage looked perfect from my perspective? I don’t understand any of this. It baffles me.”


“I know. It’s all inconceivable,” I said, sobbing, hard on myself, and wishing that Nolan Pierce had never entered our lives.


Chapter 39