Ned Baker is 29 years old, and works as a piemaker.
you should be alone with me. we could be alone, yeah, we could be alone, but never get too lonely.
If there is one thing Ned Baker is aware of, it’s the irony in his life. Irony that his last name is Baker, and that’s what he turned out to be. Irony that his mother died on the same day as his best friend-turned-girlfriend’s father. Irony that the family he wanted the most is the one he could never have. When Ned was nine years old, a blood vessel in his mother’s brain burst, killing her instantly. Of course, she was baking a pie at the time, his last memory of her will forever be her bent over the stove with her apron and oven mitts. Little could he have known how much his life would change after that. Mrs. Baker and Mr. Charles were buried on the same day. Hardly a few days afterwards, his father drove Ned to the Longborough School for Boys, a boarding school in North Thrush. The last words he heard from his father were “I’ll be back.”
He never did, though. Instead, Ned grew up all alone in the cold, lonely halls of his school. Other students got letters from home; Ned got a “we’ve moved” notice. Rather than visiting family for the holidays, he found his father had replaced him with a pretty young wife and an adorable pair of twin half-brothers. He made friends with the outcasts, and took to baking. Ned snuck into the kitchens late at night and baked pies, pretending his mother was next to him, guiding him. On nights when he missed his mother especially much, he would bake all night long, and the other boys would eat his creations. The pies kept him sane during those long lonely years. He grew into his last name, and accepted his heritage as a Baker. Except he wasn’t a run-of-the-mill baker. No, Ned baked pies, and pies alone. He didn’t like variety or change. The pies were one of the few constants in his life, a sort of security blanket.
Ned’s abandonment severely affected him in later life. He wrote himself letters to read when he was older, swearing never to forget the pain his father caused him. He avoided social attachments, knowing that they would only end in tragedy again. Instead, he pursued a career on his own, taking odds and ends jobs in order to pay his way through formal culinary training. His goal was to one day open his own pie shop, far away from his father and his replacement family. Instead, though, he ended up back in his hometown of Coeur d’Coeurs, working hard to pay his rent. By the time he was twenty-five, he had successfully established the Pie Hole, the culmination of his life’s work. A bakery serving nothing but pie, Ned lived in an apartment upstairs next-door to his sole waitress, Olive Snook. He had few friends and was still mostly alone, but that was the way he liked it. Ned had his pies, and didn’t need anything else.
When he was twenty-eight, making his standard delivery runs, he ran into a girl with a face too familiar to forget, despite having not seen her for nineteen years. Chuck Charles, his next-door neighbor and first love, was out on her own, finding a life after having nearly died on her first shot at adventure. Despite his hatred of change and attachments, Chuck wormed her way back into Ned’s heart. He found himself helping her, offering her a job at the Pie Hole for the time being, finding her an apartment in his building, getting her up on her feet. But their relationship quickly evolved from business partners to something more. There are late-night movie nights, the occasional hand-holding, a secret kiss or two. Something about Chuck opens up a part of Ned he never realized he’s locked away: the spontaneous part of him, the part that could face new things. She brings out the best in him, and that scares him a little. He’s not really used to having people care, or caring back.
++ caring, sensitive, calm
-- distant, uptight, blunt
Charlotte Charles: The last thing Ned ever expected to do was fall for Chuck. Sure, he had a serious crush on her when he was younger, and she was his first kiss, but they were kids then, dizzy with grief, curiosity and hormones. Instead, she simply amazes him, every single day. The fact that a girl could grow up alone, much like he did, and come out of it so caring, so marvelous, so loving, it doesn’t make sense to him. She seems to want more out of their relationship— she’s even talked about moving in together— but Ned is perfectly content with taking it slow.
Olive Snook: Olive’s made her crush on Ned no secret over the years, but he pretends not to notice. Instead, he sees her as a good friend and a trusted employee. Sure, her constant coming-on to him makes him rather uncomfortable, but Ned tries to avoid that. Olive is the rambunctious type, and just doesn’t quite understand boundaries, and he accepts that. If only she could accept that he really values his personal space.
Ned's fc is Lee Pace and he is unavailable
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