Love, Like Ghosts: A Bay City Paranormal Investigations Story

in front of a delivery truck for a local
grocery store chain. “All right. Basically, what we’re doing is working on possible practical applications of
quantum mechanics to interdimensional travel.”
“Seriously?”
“It’s more complicated than that, but yeah, that’s the gist of it.”
“You could really travel between dimensions?”
Adrian smiled. “That’s what we’re trying to figure out.”
“Wow.” Greg shook his head. “Have I ever told you that you’re scary smart?”
“Not today.”
“You’re scary smart.”
Adrian pulled the “scary” face he’d taken to using whenever Greg teased him about being abnormally
intelligent. Greg laughed, and some of Adrian’s tension melted away. He reached across the console and
squeezed Greg’s knee. Maybe things were getting back to normal.
~ * ~
    A week later, Adrian had begun to wonder if he was wrong.
He and Greg talked, teased and laughed just like always. They still held hands everywhere they went. Greg still stayed at Adrian’s place most nights. Each time they kissed, each time they made love, Adrian felt branded deep inside, just like he had the very first time.
In other words, everything was exactly as it had been before the Christmas holiday.
At least on the surface. Underneath, though, something had changed.
Adrian couldn’t put his finger on the difference, but he knew it was there. He felt it. Something in the way Greg looked at him. Something small. Subtle. Furtive, even, caught in glimpses from the corner of his eye and gone when he tried to look at it directly. He had no idea what to make of it, and even less of an idea what—if anything—to do about it.
“It’s not that he’s distant,” he explained to Chelsea as the two of them huddled over their closed laptops in a sunny corner of Davis Library. “He isn’t, exactly. It’s just that sometimes I’ll catch him watching me with this really strange look on his face. Really intense. Like…”
Chelsea raised her eyebrows. “Go on.” She slouched in her chair, watching him with the calm curiosity that always drew the words from him with such ease.
His brow knitted. “That’s just it. He only does it when I’m not looking, and when I catch him, he stops, so I can’t pin it down. I’ve never had anyone look at me like that. It’s…” He shook his head. “I don’t know. I have to be honest, it excites me a little, but it scares me a lot, because I don’t know what it means.”
“Hm.” She tapped a fingertip against her chin. “Have you tried just asking him?”
Adrian laughed, softly so any passing librarians wouldn’t get them in trouble. “I know that seems like the obvious answer, but I can’t, Chelsea.”
“Why not?”
Yeah, Adrian. Why not? Why can’t you ask your lover—your boyfriend, the man you’ve been in a relationship with for over three months now—what’s bothering him? Why can’t you have an honest conversation with the person you should be closer to than anyone else, when you’ve always prided yourself on your honesty?
He had no answers for himself, or for his friend. He gave her a rueful half-smile. “I’m scared of what he might say.”
Chelsea’s eyes filled with sympathy, but she didn’t ask Adrian to elaborate. He was grateful for that, mostly because he couldn’t put his finger on what exactly frightened him so much, and it bothered him to admit it.
A movement caught the edge of Adrian’s vision. He glanced to his right. Theo was strolling toward them, hands in his jacket pockets, his usual half Mona Lisa, half miscreant grin on his face. He lifted a hand and waved. “Yo, Adrian!”
The Rocky impression, loud and startling in the quiet of the library, drew more than a few stares and barely stifled laughs. Adrian winced, but waved back. “Hi, Theo.”
Jogging the last few feet, Theo swooped down and planted a kiss on Chelsea’s lips. “And hello to you, my little sweet potato.”
She shook her head, brown eyes sparkling with mingled humor and affection. “You’re nuts.”
“What about ’em?” Theo cupped his groin and waggled his eyebrows at her before plopping into the empty chair on the other side of the small round table beside the window. “So, what’re you two discussing with such seriousness over here?”
Adrian shot Chelsea a look he knew she would understand. She bobbed her head in a tiny nod, and he breathed easier. He and Chelsea had become fast friends in the past few months. In that time, he’d gotten