Apple-y Ever After - Chapter 11
Milo picked up the phone, feeling foolish for telling Saskia his ill-advised plan. Then again, better that she find out from him than the goth sibling.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “As you might imagine, I’m not spontaneous very often, and this is why.”
Saskia’s soft chuckle put him at ease. “I can be a little hard to pin down,” she said.
She took her sweet time replying to texts. She was late on the day of his party. She’d told him she was at the orchard every weekend during this season, which turned out to be untrue. He didn’t know her well, but he knew a pattern when he saw one. Despite not wanting to blame her or change her, he needed to express his concern. Which, truthfully, he could make more about him than her.
“I’m someone who needs a lot of structure in my life,” he said.
“Is that why you would rather shove garbage into other garbage on a Sunday night than hang out with me?” she asked pointedly.
Ugh, this was hard. “It’s not that I want to. I fell behind in the weeks leading up to the party, and now I have all this extra plastic filling up my apartment, and I’ve made a commitment to my dads to help with this project. If I keep letting it slide, I don’t know how I’ll be able to catch back up.”
“And then you’ll feel out of control?” Saskia guessed.
“I don’t know,” Milo answered. “I know I won’t feel good. I hate letting people down.”
“Is it because you hate being let down yourself?”
Oof. Milo did not like this line of questioning at all. He had felt let down by Saskia, and he didn’t have the right to.
Before he could formulate an answer, Saskia filled in the gaps herself. “Did you feel let down when I wasn’t at the orchard today?”
He might as well be honest. “And when you were late on the day of my party. I like you, and I like for my life to be reliable, and those two things are in tension right now.”
“I like you too, Milo.”
The warmth that flooded him with those words took him by surprise.
“Would it help to know why I was late and why I wasn’t at the orchard?”
He wasn’t sure it would, but he was open. “Maybe?” he answered.
“On the day of your party, someone was having a medical emergency on the train. It stopped in the tunnel under the river, where I had no phone service. I couldn’t get in touch with you until the train was moving again.”
Well, that wasn’t her fault at all. “Oh.”
“And today, my roommate, who is also a jewelry artist, woke up sick. They were supposed to vend at a market, and I worked the market for them, because I knew Raven could fill in for me at the orchard.”
Of course the goth teen’s name was Raven. “That was nice of you.”
“I know,” Saskia said. “So is this a weak excuse to ice me out? I’d rather you tell me the truth. I can handle it.”
“No!” Milo exclaimed. “I really do need to catch up on my ecobricking!”
Not a naturally funny guy, Milo would do an improv workshop (his personal idea of hell) if it meant he could earn more laughs like the one that rang out over the phone.
“Do you hang out with your dads while you do this?” Saskia asked.
“No,” Milo said. “It’s our asynchronous family time.” He regretted those dorky words as soon as he said them.
“Good. Why don’t you give me a call tomorrow night and talk me through your ecobricking process?”