EROS CASHBACK SYSTEM: You Can't Fake the Interest

Garrett woke up Saturday already aware he wasn’t coming home that night.

Emiliana had messaged him the evening before, casual about it in the way she’d gotten with him lately, though the actual request had been anything but casual. She wanted him to stay. Not just for dinner, not just for an evening that wrapped up politely by ten so he could catch a ride home. She wanted him there properly, for more than one night.

Garrett had pushed back at first. It wasn’t a small thing, moving into someone else’s home for a stretch of days, and it mattered less what he thought about it and more who Emiliana actually was, everything wrapped around her name, her family, the world Brian had made painfully clear existed several steps above anything Garrett had grown up around. Staying somewhere like that felt like a different kind of commitment than dinner on a Friday.

But she’d insisted, plainly enough that arguing further would have meant arguing against something she genuinely wanted, and eventually he’d given in.

Lying there Saturday morning, he did the math on it. No reason to rush over early. No reason, either, to keep putting off the thing he’d been circling around for weeks now.

His wardrobe.

He’d noticed it properly at the laundromat, the worn collars, the faded jeans, clothes that had done their job for a version of his life that no longer quite matched where he currently stood. £175,000 sat in his account, more money than he’d ever expected to have access to in his life, and he was still dressing like someone counting out coins for the bus.

That didn’t need to be true anymore.

He got up, showered, and decided the morning belonged to fixing it properly. Not one shirt at a time. All of it, at once, the way someone actually building a different life would do it.

The store he found sat in the middle of a busy shopping street, glass frontage stretching the full width of the building, polished floors visible through it even before he pushed the door open.

Inside, everything about the place felt calibrated to make spending money feel effortless. Warm lighting, soft enough that it made even the mannequins look flattering. Racks organized with more intention than Garrett’s entire wardrobe had ever possessed, grouped by color, by style, outfits already assembled on the mannequins like suggestions rather than accidents. A faint, expensive smell hung in the air, something clean and woody that Garrett couldn’t place, layered under quiet music playing just loud enough to notice.

He checked a price tag near the entrance out of habit.

More than he would’ve spent on a month of groceries a few months ago.

He didn’t flinch. That alone felt strange, standing there processing the number and feeling nothing sharper than mild curiosity about the fabric.

“Well, hello there.”

Garrett turned to find a man approaching with the energy of someone who’d been waiting all morning for exactly this moment. Squinted eyes, unusually thick eyebrows that moved independently of the rest of his expression, dark hair styled into a deliberate kind of mess that had clearly taken longer to achieve than it looked.

“I’m Milo,” he said, extending a hand. “Milo Bennett. And you, my friend, look like a man who needs an intervention.”

“Just looking for clothes.”

“That’s what they all say.” Milo’s eyebrows climbed even higher, delighted by the challenge. “And then they leave here looking like an actual human being instead of whatever this was supposed to be.” He gestured vaguely at Garrett’s outfit, the same worn shirt and faded jeans that had started this whole errand in the first place.

“Fair.”

“Oh, he agrees. Wonderful. This is going to be easy.” Milo clapped his hands together once, already surveying Garrett like a puzzle he intended to solve. “Okay. Let’s figure out who you are. Not who you think you are. Who you actually are.”

“I’m just here for basics.”

“Everyone says that too. Nobody means it.” Milo circled him once, studying the fit of his shoulders, the line of his jaw, muttering something to himself that sounded suspiciously like he was narrating Garrett’s entire personality out loud. “You’re not flashy. You don’t want to look like you’re trying. But you also don’t want to disappear into a room, or you wouldn’t have walked into a store like this instead of the discount place three streets over.”

Garrett said nothing, mildly impressed despite himself.

“See, I’m good at this,” Milo said, delighted by the silence. “Come on. Let’s build you a life.”

He steered Garrett toward the first section with the confidence of a man who’d done this a thousand times and never gotten bored of it. A deep red sweatshirt came off the rack first, held up against Garrett’s chest for inspection.

“This,” Milo declared, “is a strong opening statement.”

“It’s a sweatshirt.”

“It’s a statement, Garrett. Everything is a statement. Some things just state things quieter than others.” He tossed it toward the growing pile without waiting for agreement, already reaching for the next thing, a black oversized hoodie this time. “This one says ’I could fight you, but I’d rather not.’ Very versatile energy.”

“That’s a lot of meaning for a hoodie.”

“Clothes have layers, my friend. Pun intended, and I will not apologize for it.”

They moved through the store like that, Milo narrating everything with theatrical confidence while Garrett gradually found his footing, actually engaging with it rather than just tolerating it. A clean white heavyweight T-shirt went into the pile, along with several fitted but comfortable dark shirts that Milo insisted were “the foundation of any respectable existence.” Blue baggy jeans, black straight-leg jeans, a pair of dark cargo trousers that Milo held up with genuine reverence.

“Now these,” he said, “these are for a man who has places to be and doesn’t want his pants getting in the way of getting there.”

“They’re just trousers.”

“They’re a lifestyle, Garrett. Keep up.”

Garrett picked out a pair of neutral casual trousers on his own, and Milo actually paused, nodding slowly like he was witnessing a student surpass the teacher.

“Look at you. Developing taste in real time. I’m getting emotional.”

“You’re not.”

“I might be. Don’t take this from me.”