As overtly as she was flirting, Saskia was delighted in how direct Milo’s own approach was. His blue eyes lit up when she told him she was a fellow city dweller.
“Well then, I am asking you out,” Milo said triumphantly.
While Milo seemed like a perfectly decent guy—she had just spent the last couple of hours telling him everything she knew about apples as he hung on every word—he’d only asked questions about apples, and none about her. She knew her rack alone got her asked out on occasion, but she wanted to get a better sense of who this man was before she committed to being in any specific place at any time. Wasting time, especially on a bad date, was abhorrent to Saskia.
She gestured to a picnic table near the parking lot. “Let me get us a couple of mulled ciders. We can have our first date over those.”
Milo sat and she retrieved two steaming cups stamped with the Clemens Orchard logo.
She dove in. “Let’s get some of the basics out of the way. Where you’re originally from, what you do for work, what you like to do with your free time, other than make apple crisps.”
Milo sat up straight, as if this was a job interview. His unnecessary formality tickled Saskia, like he genuinely wanted to impress her.
“I’m originally from Long Island,” Milo began. “I work in the Broadway theater industry…”
Saskia stopped him there, too shocked to do anything but interrupt. “Are you an actor? A musician?” she asked.
Milo shook his head no, laughing. “I’m an accountant.”
Of course he was. He probably could be raking in big bucks as a finance bro, but he was a Broadway bro! This endeared him to her further.
“And for fun,” he continued, “I refurbish antique apple peelers.”
Now there was a curveball. Of course, growing up in a family orchard passed down through generations, Saskia knew exactly what he was talking about. “The hand-crank kind, with the big gears?”
He nodded enthusiastically. He probably had to pull up a picture on his phone for most people. “Exactly. I clean them up, grease the gears, make new wooden handles, sharpen the blades, powder coat them, whatever they need. I have my own collection but I also sell duplicates online.”
“That’s awesome,” Saskia said, and she meant it. She appreciated meeting a fellow craftsperson. Someone good with his hands.
“And you?” he asked.
“I’m from here, of course,” she said, sweeping her hand around her. “I’m a jewelry artist, and that bleeds into my free time as well. Everything I make is from reclaimed metal and jewels, so I spend a lot of time at estate sales, thrift stores, garage sales, and the like.”
“Exactly where I’m on the hunt for apple peelers,” Milo said.
As if it was already a memory, Saskia envisioned a lazy weekend morning with Milo. Fresh off a cheeky morning fuck, hair tousled, each holding a preposterously large iced coffee and rifling through the belongings of a recently deceased person. Why did that sound perfect?
Milo’s bags of apples gave her an idea. “How will you know which of those apples is truly the best for a crisp?”
Milo seemed to consider her question sincerely. “I may have to come up with a rubric.”
In case making a rubric really was his idea of fun, she wouldn’t shoot that down explicitly. “What if you made a whole bunch of apple crisps and let your partygoers decide which is the winner? Wouldn’t that be a fun theme for a party?”
The way he lit up lit her up, too. Then concern washed over his face. “That’s a lot of baking for one person to do,” he said.
“I could help,” she offered.
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