“What? You recognize one of them?”
Oh, did I. The short platinum hair and sharp black tattoos I knew ran all the way down his arms beneath his sleeves were burned into my memory. “Yeah, you could say that.”
“Cool, I’ll let you lead then.”
I nodded as if I was confident, but my heart rate had already sped up, and the ringing had gone from amplified in my right ear to my left. It was disorienting, to say the least. We got out at the same time, but Marcus stood back as I approached the two men, both of them arguing with their voices raised.
“I fucking saw you, asshole! Don’t even try to say you didn’t!”
“Oh, my god, you didn’t see shit! I wasn’t trying to steal your fucking bike.”
I stood off to the side, right between them. “Woah, woah, woah, what’s going on here?”
Moon turned his head, a scowl etched on his face. “What are you doing here?”
“My job. Gonna tell me what’s going on?”
He scoffed and shook his head, pointing to the man in front of him. “This asshole tried to steal my bike.”
The asshole in question intervened immediately. “That’s bullshit! It’s my fucking bike, and you know it!”
“No, it isn’t, you idiot!”
I put my hand between them, signaling Marcus over. “Alright, you two. Marcus is going to talk to you, and I’m goingto talk to you. Separately.” I placed a hand on Moon’s shoulder, moving us away from the scene.
He sighed, rolling the bike alongside us. “I can prove this is my bike.”
Nodding, I looked down at the bicycle in question. “Okay, I believe you. What happened, exactly?”
He was wearing a turtleneck again, the black collar going all the way around his neck. “I’m headed to my brother’s house, right? I saw a patch of daisies right over there, and Cres and Elio have this weird thing with daisies. Like, they’re in every painting Elio does just about. Anyway, I leaned the bike against the wall so I could pick some. When I turned around, that dude—who I’ve never met, by the way—had his hands on the handlebars and was walking away with it.”
“Okay, what next?”
“I yelled at him to get away from my bike, grabbed the handlebars from him, then he looked all fucking guilty and shit, and then tried to say it was his. He kept yelling at me, claiming it was his, so I yelled back. I guess someone called you guys because we were being loud.”
I nodded along with him, though the ringing in my ears was close to drowning him out. It was getting harder to focus the louder it got. “Sounds pretty clean cut. I saw this bike when I left the bakery the other day. Can you just humor me, though? Show me how you can prove it’s yours?”
He went to the handlebars and peeled back a piece of rubber on them. The piece lifted easily, revealing the initials ‘MM’ etched into the metal underneath. “See? Those are my initials. I carved that just in case something like this happened, or the bike got lost.”
“Yeah, it makes sense. Hang tight for a sec, okay?” I made my way back to Marcus, who had the most bored expression on his face I’d seen in a minute.
The guy was still talking pretty loudly, moving his hands animatedly while he did. “Hey, Marcus. That’s definitely not his bike.”
“Yeah, I didn’t think so,” Marcus cut the guy off. “Go ahead and get out of here, man.”
The guy’s jaw dropped as he sputtered a response out. “But…but that’s my bike!”
I stood my ground. “Either go, or we’ll force you to go. How’s that sound?”
He started to walk away, still grumbling, but I couldn’t hear what he was saying. I marched back over to Moon, who wore a pretty smug smirk. “You can head on to Crescent’s house now. Sorry about all that.”
“Thanks. I hate that we dragged you guys out here like that for something so stupid.”
“No problem, that’s what we’re here for. Who knows if he would’ve gotten violent?”
“I can take care of myself, but thanks.”
Moon had gotten back on his bike and was about to leave. “Hey, do you still have my card?”
