Chapter 14: Dressing for the Night
Roha stood at the apartment door with his hand on the frame, watching Kyle and Joaquin argue over whose turn it was to grab the milk they kept forgetting to buy. The argument resolved itself with a shrug and a shared laugh, and then they were gone, leaving him alone in the quiet apartment with the afternoon stretching out in front of him.
He liked the quiet. He'd had plenty of it. But this was different. This quiet came with an address to return to, a bed he'd woken up in, a text thread with Kyle that started with a single "hey" and ended with a string of emojis he still didn't fully understand but appreciated anyway.
The plan was simple. Kyle and Joaquin both worked until early evening. Pulse opened at nine. That gave Roha hours of free time, which was still such a strange concept that he kept poking at it like a loose tooth.
He decided to walk.
The city was different in the daylight. The same streets he'd wandered before felt sharper somehow, more specific. People hurried past with coffees and phones, and shop windows flashed with mannequins wearing everything from business suits to mesh crop tops. Roha stopped in front of one window and studied the display. The colors were loud. The cuts were aggressive. Nothing in this city seemed designed for quiet.
He checked his own reflection in the glass. The dark charcoal shirt, the slim trousers, the gold band on his wrist. It was fine. Functional. But it was also the same thing he'd worn since he crawled out of the lamp in that alley, and if tonight was going to be a full night at a club opening, he wanted to feel like he belonged there.
He turned into the first clothing store and immediately regretted it. The music was too loud, the lighting too harsh, and a salesperson zeroed in on him within seconds.
"Can I help you find anything?"
"No," Roha said, too fast. The salesperson's smile flickered but held.
He wandered the racks anyway, touching fabrics he didn't have names for. Nylon. Polyester. Some kind of weird stretchy material that felt like it was trying to be skin. He put a shirt back and moved to the next store.
This one was smaller. Quieter. A curated rack of tank tops in colors that actually made sense together, and a wall of jeans arranged by fit. Roha picked up a bright orange tank top and held it against his chest. The color was a lot. It was loud and unapologetic, the kind of thing Kyle would wear to a club with zero hesitation.
He put it back. Then he picked it up again.
The indecision was almost funny. He'd spent three thousand years with no choices at all. Now the options were overwhelming in the best way. He could pick anything. He could be anyone.
He moved to the jeans. Slim fit, the tag said. Dark wash. He ran his thumb over the denim, feeling the sturdy weight of it. These would move well on a dance floor.
The orange top went back in his hands. He added a blue one, a softer shade that reminded him of the ocean at dusk. He stood there for a long moment, holding both, weighing them like they were artifacts.
The two tank tops felt right in his hands. The orange was Kyle energy, loud and unapologetic. The blue was calmer, a color that felt like breathing out. He could picture the whole outfit now, the slim jeans, the ponytail he'd been considering. It was coming together.
He hung both tops back on the rack, smoothed the fabric, and walked out of the store.
The afternoon sun hit him square in the face. He squinted, turned left, and headed toward the park. The walk gave him time to think. Three thousand years of nothing, and now he was stressing over what to wear to a club. He almost laughed at himself.
The park was busy. Kids ran across the grass while their parents sat on benches staring at phones. A group of teenagers yelled at each other over a soccer ball. Roha kept walking, past the fountain, past the flower beds, until the noise faded behind him.
He found it near the back fence. A cluster of old oaks with thick trunks, a patch of grass hidden from the main paths by a low hedge. Nobody could see him here unless they were deliberately looking.
He pulled the phone from his pocket. The sleek black surface shimmered in his palm, and with a thought, it warped and folded in on itself until he was holding the brass lamp again. It felt heavier than it should. Warmer. He set it on the grass, sat down cross-legged beside it, and closed his eyes.
The transition was like stepping through cool water. One moment he was sitting in the park; the next he was inside the lamp, surrounded by the familiar dark that had been his home for so long. He didn't linger. He had a job to do.
He thought of the outfit. The orange tank, the blue one for texture, the slim jeans. He thought of his hair pulled back, away from his face, the way he'd seen it in the store window and liked. He thought of Kyle's smile, how it was going to look when Roha walked into the club tonight.
The magic responded like a song he'd known forever.
When he stepped back into the sunlight, the change was complete. The gray shirt and trousers were gone. He wore a fitted tank top in bright orange with blue accents stitched along the seams, a color combination that should have clashed but somehow worked. The slim jeans hugged his legs. His hair was tied back in a low ponytail, the strands slicked away from his face.
He looked down at himself. Then he looked at his reflection in the brass lamp's curved surface, which he'd left sitting on the grass.
The guy staring back at him looked like he belonged at a club. He looked like he belonged anywhere.
Roha smiled. It wasn't the careful, measured smile he'd worn around strangers. It was the real one, the one that reached his eyes, the one he'd discovered he had back when Kyle kissed him in the doorway of the apartment building.
He picked up the lamp and turned it back into a phone in his hand. Seven more hours until Pulse opened. He had time.
He walked out from behind the oaks with his head up, the gold band warm against his wrist, and the city didn't feel overwhelming anymore. It felt like a place he could actually live in.