“No,” his neighbor insisted again. She tossed a nervous glance at Bass and edged away from Tag. “Nothing’s wrong. We’re fine.”
She ducked around him and ran up the steps, baby pressed to her chest and pajama pants loose around her legs. The door slammed behind her, and Tag exhaled unhappily.
“She thinks you’re going to call social services on her,” Bass said. “Then they’ll take her kid because she let it get sick.”
“That’s not going to happen,” Tag said.
“Maybe not with you,” Bass allowed. His bike was parked next to the building, up on the curb instead of in a space. He slung his leg over the saddle and backed it out. “But around here? It’s happened before, probably to someone she knows. Don’t take it personally, but she’s not going to trust you, Doc. Your face doesn’t fit.”
“I just want to help.”
“She doesn’t want you to, though,” Bass countered. He kick-started the bike and gave Tag a curious look as he revved the engine to warm it up. “How did you end up down here anyhow? Did your ex get your credit score in the breakup?”
Close enough, actually, but Tag could still have gotten a place in a nicer part of town. Half the surgeons at the hospital owned second “investment” properties he could have signed a lease on even before he hit the internet. Instead he’d dragged his unreliable car and two suitcases full of his clothes down here to an old apartment block with dubious water and an elevator that worked two days out of five.
“I could move straight in,” Tag said as he climbed on the back of the bike. He wrapped his arms around Bass and leaned in against his back. “It’s a month-to-month lease, so I wouldn’t get stuck with any penalties when I found somewhere better. The building is clean enough, no rats or bedbug infestations. It was… convenient.”
And the thought of anything better—anything that smacked of permanence—had scared the shit out of him. People who expected things to work out didn’t sign year-long leases to an apartment in a building with access to a pool.
“There’s worse neighborhoods,” Bass said with a shrug. He passed a glossy black helmet back over his shoulder, the straps loose as he waited for Tag to take it. “But you start being nice to these people, Doc, and they’ll drain you dry. A handout here, a favor there, and they’ll pay you back when they get on their own feet again. Except they never do.”
“It’s a baby with the flu,” Tag said. “My credit might be bad, but I can pull ten minutes and a packet of baby Benadryl if they need it.”
“That’s how it starts,” Bass said, shreds of old bitterness in his voice. He revved the bike impatiently, and Tag fumbled the helmet straps tight so he could grab hold with both hands as they took off. “Trust me. I grew up around here. You might think you’re Mr. Nice Guy, but everyone else will just think you’re a soft touch.”
He swerved out onto the road in front of an old Ford Escort, primer exposed in Rorschach patterns over the hood, and then between a camper van and a rental car with Nevada plates. They sped through the intersection as the lights went red, the indignant squawk of a car horn to the side of them.
Tag leaned into Bass’s back and hung on to him as they took the next corner. He knew he should tell Bass to be more careful, to drive safely and slow down. At least once a week, some weekend biker was rolled into the ER after they came off their bikes, usually along the coastal route up to LA—broken legs, cracked faces, trauma to the spleen and liver, abraded skin, and lots of blood. On the other hand, Bass was all hard muscle and warm skin that still smelled like Tag’s soap, and the flicker of possessive lust made it easy to ignore all thoseshoulds.
Besides, people came into the ER after they fell down stairs, cut off their fingers in car doors, or got dared to see if something would fit in their mouth. Life wasn’t safe, and sometimes the occasional risk—bike rides, bad boys—was worth it.
Maybe.
“Do you think I’m a soft touch?” Tag asked cautiously, voice pitched to carry over the wind. The suspicion that this was—still, all along, somehow—a con on Bass’s part dug in its claws behind his eyes.
Bass veered to the left and cut around a station wagon decorated with a dozen faded decals about their kid’s school. He glanced over his shoulder and smirked at Tag.
“Naw,” he said. “You’re always hard enough when I touch you.”
