Chapter 115: New Rewards…

"First," Adrian said, "what exactly costs a hundred and forty-five dollars?"

Rose turned the hanger around like a magician revealing a card.

It was a jacket. Indigo, wide in the sleeve, cut short, with tiny gold stitches running across the collar and down both cuffs in an uneven scatter he needed a second look to read as constellations. It was the only thing on the racks that looked like someone had made it on purpose. He disliked how fast he understood why she’d picked it.

"You have a jacket," he said.

"I have the green jacket. This is a different jacket."

He had no counter to that. It was, technically, a different jacket.

"Is this for the channel? We already agreed on outfits."

"I said I’d explain." Rose said it lightly, but she’d stopped moving. "I never said it was for the channel."

Adrian paused. The sentence had gone through his head in the wrong order: hundred and forty-five, shopping trip, shared budget, filed. He’d dropped her purchase into a folder she hadn’t opened.

"Would you wear it outside streaming?"

"Adrian." She hung it over her arm. "I don’t need permission to buy a jacket."

It wasn’t hostile. Rose didn’t do hostile; she did level, and level was worse. He’d slid from talking about a budget into talking about her, and she’d noticed before he had. ’Wrong department.’

"Right," he said. "Sorry."

She watched him a second longer, then her shoulders came down. "I picked it up because I thought it’d look good on camera," she admitted, more quietly. "Then I put it on in the mirror and stopped thinking about the camera."

It was the most honest thing anyone had said about clothes all afternoon, and he suspected it had cost her more than the jacket.

Behind them, the clerk with the lint roller had found something urgent to do with a rack of scarves, which was professional eavesdropping. Adrian pretended not to notice.

Jenna drifted over from the sweaters, where she’d clearly been listening, and read the tag like a menu with a bad reputation. "Eight seconds," she told Adrian. "Personal best." Then, to Rose: "It’s beautiful. Is it a hundred-and-forty-five-dollars beautiful?"

"The seams are finished by hand." Rose turned a cuff inside out to show her. "The wool’s dense, so the stitching won’t pull. I’d wear it over the olive trousers, over a dress, over the leggings. I already own half the outfits."

"That’s a very good case."

"It’s the case I’d make if I were buying it."

Adrian did the math anyway. A hundred and forty-five was a second light, or a better stand, or nearly two of the overshirt he’d been bullied into loving. The arithmetic ran by itself, like a tap he’d forgotten to turn off.

Then he caught it. He’d tiptoed around Jenna’s jacket for ten minutes, and here he was holding a stopwatch over Rose’s. ’Stop.’ The right question had never been whether it was worth it.

"Do you think you’ll get enough use out of it?"

Rose didn’t answer immediately. She slid the jacket on, pushed the sleeves up, popped the collar, then turned it back down, and ran her thumb along the gold stitching the way she ran it along a seam on a rack. Her reflection looked back at her. She stopped arguing with it.

"Yes," she said. "I think I will."

"Then that’s the answer."

She’d be paying for it herself, which needed no further discussion, and he kept his opinion in his pocket next to his wallet. It was a little awkward and a little unfinished, and somehow the best part of the afternoon. Three people had agreed to build one channel without agreeing to give up what they walked out wearing.

They carried their piles to the bench by the fitting rooms and laid everything out like evidence: his green knit, the black tee, the rust overshirt; Jenna’s black jacket; Rose’s green jacket, her rust top, and the new indigo one. Warm against cool, soft against sharp. Nobody matched, and nobody clashed.

Adrian checked the tags again. He’d walked in wanting three versatile pieces, and he had three, each more specific than planned because everyone had opinions about what it was for. He scanned the pile for anything he’d bought just to keep the peace and couldn’t find it. The knit was $68, the tee $38, the overshirt $84.

It came to $190, forty over the number in his head. The overshirt was the most expensive piece of clothing he’d ever bought on purpose, and it still felt like a mild crime. But he’d wear it. That was the part he’d have to live with.

Everything else could wait for another day. He turned the overshirt’s tag over a third time.

"Are you returning it?" Jenna asked.

"I’m confirming it hasn’t gotten more expensive while I wasn’t looking."

"If you keep checking," Rose said, "they’ll charge you rent for the mirror."

Before they could head to the register, Jenna looked him over. He was still wearing the overshirt, open over the black tee, and he’d been wearing it for twenty minutes.

"You’re still in it."

"It’s a comfort test."

"Is it? Or is taking it off admitting the shopping trip improved your wardrobe?"

"Some clothes look great in the mirror and become unbearable after an hour." He said it with dignity. "I’m gathering data."

"He’s right," Rose said. "A collar can look perfect and start strangling you by hour two."

"I could have learned that without two people supervising me."

"You could also have bought six gray shirts," Jenna said, "and declared the matter closed."

He opened his mouth to defend the gray shirts. The evidence was overwhelming, and the gray shirts hadn’t earned a lawyer. He closed it.

"Gray is fine," Rose said kindly. "In moderation. Like salt."

At the register, the clerk with the lint roller looked at three piles and decided not to ask.

Adrian split them with the care of a man dividing a restaurant bill: Jenna’s jacket and the belt she’d slipped in when nobody was looking went in front of her, Rose’s two jackets and the rust top in front of Rose, his in front of him. "Channel stuff stays off these," he said. "Wardrobe gets its own receipts."

Jenna tapped for the jacket and the belt without a flicker, $111 total, her chin level while the terminal thought about it, the posture of someone enjoying a number because it was hers.

Rose’s turn. She tapped her card for the indigo jacket without looking at the total, the way someone pays when the decision has already been made, and the clerk wrapped it in tissue with a care she hadn’t spared his overshirt. "Gold stitching," the clerk murmured. "People never buy this one."

"Good," Rose said. "It was waiting for me."

He paid last. $205.40. The terminal accepted it without comment, which was more than he could say for the overshirt.

Jenna glanced at the three neat receipts, then at him. "You kept it all separate. That’s unusually reasonable."

"I’ve always been reasonable. The problem is that neither of you respects my opinions until a mirror has tested them."

"The mirror’s been right so far," Rose said.

He reached for the bags. Rose got one first. "If you’re going to complain about being overruled, you can stop acting like the designated carrier for the whole group."

He gave her the lightest bag and kept the other two. Jenna gave him a look that said she’d seen exactly what he’d done and was going to let it go, for now.

The automatic doors let them out into the plaza, which had gone amber while they weren’t looking. Adrian ran the totals once more as they crossed it. $205.40, fifty-five over the number he’d carried in. But none of it had gone to random things: a sweater, a tee, and a shirt he’d wear to class; a jacket Jenna could correct people in; and a thing with stitched constellations that Rose had put on and stopped negotiating with. He’d walked in expecting a budget problem. What he’d found was that everyone had finally picked something they wanted, which was a harder thing to put a price on.

The Corolla waited at the end of the row, a loyal dog that hadn’t been told its owner now owned a campfire.

Rose had worn the indigo jacket out of the store with the collar up, and it made her look like she’d stepped out of one of her own paintings. Beside her, Jenna adjusted a cuff, checked the shoulder against her reflection in a shop window, and checked it again, pretending she wasn’t.

"You look like someone who owns a gallery," Jenna told Rose. "A small one, with opinions."

"That was the plan." Rose said it lightly, but her thumb found the stitching again.

"Do you regret the overshirt?" she asked him.

He looked down. Rust, corduroy, eighty-four dollars, a campfire in a parking lot. He waited for the regret to arrive. It didn’t. "No."

"That’s progress," Jenna said.

Adrian decided not to ask what the next stage would cost.

***

[A/N] Thank you for your support so far.

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