“I gotta tell you,” Bass drawled. He was on the couch, knee cocked as he pulled on his boots. “The scrubs kind of do it for me.”
Tag half laughed and half choked on the noodles. He wiped his mouth on the back of his hand. “I thought the tux was what turned you on.”
“That too,” Bass said as he dropped his foot back to the floor. “I think I’ve got some sort of respectability kink. You want a ride to the hospital before you choke on that coffee?”
“Ah, no—”
“I can drop you off around the corner if you don’t want to be seen with me.”
It was a matter-of-fact offer. Tag bought himself a moment as he took another drink of bitter, scalding-hot coffee. Maybe no strings meant he didn’t have to care if he hurt Bass’s feelings, but he couldn’t quite believe that. Besides, why not? Bass was handsome, funny, and enjoyed Tag’s company. The details that made Tag hesitate to show him off—the betrayal, his connections, Tag’s complete stupidity around him—weren’t out there for public consumption.
“The bus would drop me off at the corner,” Tag said dryly. He dumped his coffee in the sink and the empty take-out box in the trash. “If you want to give me a lift, drop me outside.”
A slow, unexpectedly sweet smile spread over Bass’s face. It wasn’t the wicked, careless grin that Tag couldn’t resist, but it took his breath away for a second. There was something soft about the expression, and from the way Bass tried to bite it back, lower lip caught between his teeth, it turned out Tag couldn’t resist that either. Then it faded away, tucked back behind a smirk as Bass hopped up off the couch.
“What?” he asked when he caught Tag’s stare. “You want me to bring the bike up the stairs?”
“No,” Tag said, caught off balance. Again. He combed his fingers through his hair in an attempt to flatten it down, as though that would cover up that he was flustered. “Just… not sure how this works yet.”
Bass shrugged. “Who cares, as long as it does. You ready to go? Otherwise even I won’t be able to get you to work on time.”
It felt like there should be more to it—papers to grab, doors to check, keys to find—but Tag supposed that was the advantage of an apartment you could see in its entirety from the door. The sheets were stuffed into the washing machine, and all he had to do was flick the switch on the coffee machine to Off.
“Yes, I’m good to go,” Tag said. He patted his pockets and realized he had forgotten something. “I just need to get my—”
Bass grabbed the phone from the coffee table and tossed it to Tag as he pushed him out the door. “Here you go. And unblock me,” he said. “You’re taking my calls again.”
“I am?” Tag asked as he unlocked the phone.
“Or I can track you around town like a fox on a chicken’s trail,” Bass chuckled as he slammed the door behind him. It locked automatically. “A text seems easier.”
He had a point. Tag briefly scanned his messages in case he’d missed anything important, but the notifications were from Twitter, his sister in Eugene, and two texts that Beattie had sent before the date actually started, just a question mark followed by an exclamation point. Nothing he needed to deal with immediately.
“You never did say how you tracked me down at the fair,” he pointed out absently as he navigated to Settings.
“No,” Bass said mildly. He patted Tag’s ass. “I didn’t, did I.”
It took a few false starts before Tag remembered where to find his blocked numbers. There were only three in there. Two were unstable patients who’d managed to get hold of his number somehow. He tapped Bass’s number with his thumb as he leaned his shoulder against the door at the bottom of the stairs.
“Maybe youdojust love artisan cheese,” Tag mocked over his shoulder as he stepped outside. Half-blinded by the light, his attention split between his phone and Bass, he walked right into his upstairs neighbor and her baby. She yelped and stumbled backward in surprise, sniffling infant clutched to her chest. Tag caught her elbows to steady her and then let go when she flinched. He held up his hands. “Sorry. Sorry. I didn’t see you.”
She stared at him, eyes dark and tired as she jiggled the baby up and down in her arms on autopilot. There was a bruise on her jaw that gave Tag pause—dark purple against the warm brown of her skin. Without her makeup and tabard, her hair down, she looked a lot younger than he’d vaguely assumed she was whenever they passed in the dimly lit stairwell.
“Are you okay?” he asked.
She shuffled back from him, her feet bare on the rough concrete, and nodded. “Fine,” she said in a quiet, anxious voice. Her eyes flicked to a point over Tag’s shoulder as Bass came down the steps. She quickly looked back down at her baby. She stroked his flyaway hair down against his scalp with nervous fingers. “Nothing is wrong.”
Bass jingled his keys. “We should go, Doc.”
Tag hesitated. He hadn’t heard the baby cry the last few mornings. It hadn’t occurred to him to be anything but grateful, but now he could hear the thick, congested snuffle each time the baby breathed in. A baby who didn’t cry was what every parent longed for. A baby who was too sick to cry was when doctors got worried.
“Is he sick?” He ducked his head to get a better look at the baby. “Coughing?”
His neighbor wrapped her arms tighter around the baby. “My baby is fine,” she repeated. Her accent thickened and was heavier on the ends of her words as she got more nervous. “We don’t need anything, mister.”
The baby squirmed, wheezed, and waved his arms vaguely in the air. He looked miserable, his hair sweat-matted to his forehead and his skin tight and shiny with what could be fever. It was probably just a cold, maybe the flu. But there had been a couple of cases of whooping cough in local schools, and those were probably the parents whose houses Tag’s neighbor went off to clean in the afternoons.
“If he has a fever—?”
