Back at his apartment, Milo moped while he disassembled a rusted old apple peeler. Normally, this hobby brought him such joy, a way to use his hands when he spent all day in his head and a world of numbers. But he couldn’t decide if he was overreacting about Saskia.
He couldn’t change who he was fundamentally. He was a guy who was always going to want the map. He would never, ever throw away the map. She was the person who had a pretty good reason for throwing away the map—she trusted him—and he failed to rise to the occasion. They were setting themselves up for failure.
A text from his puppeteer friend Miguel broke him out of his funk.
Miguel: Can I come over and use your power tools? Puppet emergency.
Milo: of course
The distraction would be welcome. As soon as Miguel stepped into the apartment, he seemed to know something was off with Milo.
“You look like a haunted tapeworm,” Miguel said.
“That’s mean.”
“That’s honesty. What’s wrong?”
Milo explained how things went south with Saskia.
“Oh, you absolutely cannot fumble this, Milo!” Miguel said. “There’s a fine line between incompatibility and balance, and you two have the potential for balance! I saw how you were at your party.”
Milo thought about how she’d tallied the apple votes as he read them out. He needed someone to keep score for him while he was being a little theatrical, something he rarely was, and she did it intuitively. He could have chosen to see that as the beginning of a pattern, but he didn’t.
“So what keeps a relationship from tipping into incompatibility?”
Miguel set the puppet—a giant flower—on the floor and made markings on it with a pencil.
“Good faith,” Miguel said between bursts of drilling holes on the marked spots. “She didn’t throw away the map to hurt you. Give her some grace and see how it pays off when you do something equally obnoxious.”
When it came to harm, Milo had always lived by the credo “impact over intent.” But he could see there was room for nuance here. They were still getting to know each other. Intimacy exposes weakness, both inside people and between them. Those weaknesses weren’t a reason to throw everything away. After all, no apple peeler was beyond redemption to him; some just took a little more care and attention. He could show care and attention for what he and Saskia had.
“Thanks, Miguel, that’s a helpful perspective. Now what’s the puppet emergency?”
“I’m auditioning for the forthcoming Flowers in the Attic musical tomorrow morning and I need to prepare,” Miguel said breathlessly.
“There are puppet flowers?”
“There will be if I have anything to say about it!”
“Break a leg,” Milo said. “Or a stem, I guess.”
“Thank you,” Miguel said, kissing Milo on the cheek and dashing out the door.
Milo put away the drill and took a moment to scroll social media before returning to the apple peeler. He saw Clemens Orchard’s post of an upcoming town-wide garage sale. Like a well-restored apple peeler, his gears started turning.
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