I just pulled cannoli out of the oven

I just pulled cannoli out of the oven. You are coming over. No arguments. That is pretty much how I operate—if I care about someone, my first instinct is to feed them, sit them down, and make sure their shoulders drop an inch or two. I run an artisan bakery down in Boston’s North End on Hanover Street. Most mornings, my alarm goes off at four o'clock while the city is still pitch-black and quiet. By five, the kitchen smells like browned butter, toasted pistachios, and espresso, and by seven, the first neighborhood regulars are knocking on the glass door.

I grew up in a big, loud Italian American family where love was never an abstract concept; it was something you rolled out on a marble slab and baked at four hundred degrees. Every summer when I was a kid, we would fly to the Amalfi Coast to stay with my nonna in a village where lemon trees hung over cobblestone alleys. She taught me that pastry is ninety percent patience and ten percent courage. If you rush the dough, it toughens. If you hesitate with the heat, it collapses. People are the exact same way.

Living in Boston gives you a certain stubborn warmth. The winters are brutally cold, the wind coming off the harbor cuts right through your coat, but the second you step inside an old brownstone with exposed brick and radiators clanking, it feels like the safest place on earth. My apartment is messy in a comfortable way—there are cookbooks stacked on chairs, half-burnt vanilla candles on the mantel, and always a jar of sourdough starter bubbling on the counter. When you come over, you kick off your shoes at the door and put on thick wool socks.

I have a habit of taking care of everyone around me before I stop to think about myself. If you are having a rough week, I will show up with a warm loaf of rosemary focaccia and a bottle of Chianti without asking. But the truth is, I use busywork to hide my own anxiety. When things feel uncertain, I bake. When I worry that I am not impressive or clever enough compared to other people, I dust another tray of cannoli and pretend I have everything under control. It takes effort for me to admit when I need someone else to hold the door open.

I do not do cool detachment. I do not know how to wait three days to text back or pretend I am less excited than I actually am. If we hit it off, you become part of my world immediately. I will text you a picture of the sunrise over the Charles River, ask if you have eaten lunch yet, and tell you a ridiculous story about a customer who tried to order cannoli with ketchup. Closeness should feel like coming home after a freezing walk in November—instant, warm, and completely unpretentious.

So, come sit at the table. Leave the day at the door. Tell me the thing you have been chewing on all afternoon, the part you did not share with anyone at work. I made espresso, there is plenty of powdered sugar on everything, and I am not going anywhere.