Chapter 113: $289 And A Shopping Spree

The mic came in a box roughly the size of a loaf of bread, and Adrian carried it out of the electronics store with both hands, like a man escorting something fragile to a courtroom.

"You’re holding it like a baby," Rose said.

"It’s $289 and metal. I’m honoring that."

The plaza had gone gold. He was halfway through a pleasant thought about the second light when Rose stopped beside the planter and looked him up and down, slowly, the way she’d looked at the jacket zipper.

"What are you wearing on camera?"

He glanced down. Gray T-shirt, jeans. "This."

"The mic is a statement piece. You’re wearing a laundry hamper." She started walking again, so he followed, which was apparently how this relationship worked. "If we’re going to look like a channel, the three of us need to look like we belong on the same screen. People remember a look."

"I own clothes."

"You own six gray shirts."

He opened his mouth. Seven, technically. He closed it again. Some facts were better carried in silence.

Jenna was waiting on the bench outside the café where they’d parked, a bag from the lighting aisle between her feet and her coffee held like an argument she’d been saving. She’d paid for the lights herself, $180, receipt visible under her thumb like proof of purchase for her own dignity.

"Clothes," Rose announced, before Adrian could say hello.

"Clothes?" Jenna’s eyes went to the receipt, then to him. "If this is how you slide a wardrobe onto my tab, I’d like it noted that I said no in advance."

"Nobody’s paying for yours," Adrian said.

"Good. I want to look professional, not sponsored."

"You’d be dressed like a streamer," Rose said. "Warm light, painted backdrop. If the board’s amber, you can’t wear amber. You’ll vanish."

"I’d like to buy things I can wear to a lecture," Adrian said. "Not a costume."

Both women turned and looked at him, in unison, which was the most dangerous thing he’d seen all day.

"Your clothes aren’t a costume," Jenna said. "They’re a witness protection program."

"They cover me."

"They hide you."

Rose nodded gravely. "She’s right."

He’d walked into his own ambush.

They settled it fast, a store, all three, one rule: nobody bought anything without saying why. It was a decent rule. It would last until the first price tag.

The store was bright and carefully unbothered, with a long wall of folded knits. A clerk by the register had a lint roller sticking out of her back pocket and the expression of someone who’d watched a lot of friend groups disagree about sleeves.

Rose attacked the racks. She didn’t browse; she curated. A cream knit, a rust shirt, something deep green, each held up against a mental swatch of the backdrop. "Warm, warm, accent." She passed Jenna a sweater. "Try this."

Jenna held it at arm’s length like it had insulted her. "I’m direct, not cute. Anything that apologizes is out."

"It’s soft," Rose said.

"It has a collar like a hug." Jenna moved on. "I want structure. Shoulders. Something that says ’I will correct your pitch.’"

Adrian trailed behind, checking tags the way other people check mirrors. A tee was $38. A plain shirt was $64, and he put it back with the care of a man defusing something.

"You’re doing the face," Rose said, without turning around.

"I’m doing math."

"The math says it’s a shirt."

"The shirt says sixty-four dollars."

Jenna leaned around a rack. "What’s he getting?"

"Navy," Rose said. "Structured, deep. It reads clean on camera."

"He’d look like a regional manager." Jenna wrinkled her nose. "Too formal. He’s a host, not a bank."

"He’s a host with a brand."

"He’s a man in a living room who happens to have a brand." She pulled a charcoal sweater off a table and held it against him. "This. Soft, not stuffy."

"That’s gray," Adrian said.

"It’s a better gray."

"It’s the color I own six of."

Rose took the sweater, looked at it, and set it down. "It’s fine. It’s boring."

"I’m sorry, boring?" He actually felt wounded, which surprised him. "This is functional. Neutral colors go with everything. It’s strategy."

"It’s a coping mechanism," Jenna said.

"It’s a gray wall with legs," Rose added.

"I’m outnumbered."

"You’re agreed with," Rose said. "It’s different."

He drew himself up, offended on principle, and caught them trading a look, quick and delighted. Two people with nothing in common except the verdict.

They narrowed it down in the ruthless way people do when the clerk starts hovering. He wanted three versatile pieces. Rose put a deep green knit in his hands and said nothing. It was nothing he’d choose, which was the point.

"I wear green," he said. "I wore green in Sin’s Peace."

"You wore one green shirt and you looked like you’d been slapped awake." Rose held the knit against his chest. "It works with the board."

"It’s good," Jenna said.

Adrian turned. "You said structure."

"I said structure for me. You’re soft." She said it flatly, like a diagnosis. "It’s good, Hayes. It’s the first thing you’ve held that looks like you chose it."

Two against one. He held the sweater up to the mirror and found, annoyingly, that the guy staring back looked like he’d actually moved somewhere. He negotiated: one green, a black layer under it, and plain gray pants he already trusted. Rose accepted with the serene smugness of a woman who’d gotten eighty percent and planned to collect the rest later.

Jenna found hers near the back: a fitted black jacket with sharp shoulders and a thin line of gold at the collar. She put it on and stopped talking, which in Jenna meant the highest compliment. It looked like she’d be correcting pitch from the stage. It was the first time all day the clothes looked like her instead of the other way around. Then she turned over the tag, and her shoulders dropped half an inch.

$89. A dark gray one on the next hanger was $54.

She hung the black one back, very casually, with the studied calm of someone pretending a number hadn’t hit her.

Adrian saw it. He also saw the receipt still stuck to her coffee cup from the lights. She’d said it twice: her money, her choice. If he offered, he’d be taking the choice away.

"Put them side by side," he said instead.

She looked at him. "I’m fine."

"I know. I’m asking what I’d pick." He held the two jackets together in the light. "The cut’s the same. This one has the better shoulders. This one fades if you wash it twice." He tapped the cheaper one. "Which would you wear for a year?"

Jenna studied them for a long moment. She pulled the black one off the hanger, turned it over, and read the fabric tag like a lawyer.

"The expensive one," she said. "I’ll skip two coffees."

She laughed, the real one, and walked off toward the register with the jacket over her arm like she’d won something.

Rose chose last. Cream knit, oatmeal cardigan, a pair of olive trousers. She laid them out like a palette. "They shouldn’t match. They should rhyme."

"They look like the backdrop," Jenna said.

"That’s the idea."

"That’s the problem." Jenna picked up the oatmeal cardigan. "You’re hiding in the wall again. Everyone else gets a color. You get beige."

"Beige is neutral."

"Beige is what people wear to avoid being looked at." Jenna said it gently, which made it land. "You’re the one who didn’t want to be on camera. Fine. But you still have to show up."

Rose looked at the cardigan for a long time. Adrian said, quietly, "You picked three jackets for the two of us and a cardigan for yourself that matches the wall."

"That’s not—" Rose stopped. "That’s fair."

She put the cream knit back. She picked up the deep green jacket, the one she’d turned over twice, and held it against herself in the mirror. For once she didn’t say what the color was for.

There was one more thing, and it arrived the way trouble always did, on a very small hanger. Jenna pulled it off the rack and held it against him: a rust corduroy overshirt, a color that had never been invited anywhere he’d been.

"No," Adrian said.

"You haven’t looked."

"It’s a pumpkin with sleeves."

"It’s rust," Rose said, from behind him, in a suspiciously smooth voice. "It’s exactly the board."

"You’re helping her."

"I’m helping the brand."

He turned the tag over like it might say something different on the back. $84. Eighty-four dollars for the privilege of becoming visible. Two women stood waiting at either shoulder in a patient silence that was somehow louder than the argument.

Even the clerk, lint roller in hand, had stopped pretending not to watch.

Picking a few clothes had become harder than buying the microphone.

"If I say no," he said, "do I get a vote?"

"You get a vote," Jenna said. "You just lose it."

"It’s a vote with a view," Rose agreed.

He looked at the overshirt. The overshirt looked back.