Love, Like Ghosts: A Bay City Paranormal Investigations Story

since middle school. And I’m a psych major.”
Something unpleasantly familiar squirmed in the pit of Adrian’s stomach. “What if I wasn’t gay? What if I was to show interest in her?”
“She’d push you away with both hands. Find some reason why you weren’t compatible, pick fights. Anything to keep from having to work at a relationship.” She gave him a narrow look. “Why?”
“No reason. Just idle speculation.” The tiny falsehood came out sounding stilted, but there was no help for it. As much as he valued truth in all things, there was absolutely no way Adrian was telling Chelsea the real reason for his question.
God, he could hear Christian now, accusing him of inventing reasons to end it between them. Adrian had scorned Christian’s claims at the time, but now the parallels between Erin’s behavior and his own seemed clear, and he had to wonder if Christian had been right after all. Had he been the one to destroy their relationship? And if so, had his subconscious prodded him into doing it in order to avoid telling Christian about his psychokinesis?
Adrian shook his head. He’d never believed himself capable of such things—especially without even being aware of it—but there it was. He couldn’t ignore the possibility.
At that moment, Greg crossed Adrian’s line of sight, arm in arm with a ridiculously handsome boy whose name Adrian couldn’t remember. The two had their heads close together, talking and laughing. Greg didn’t so much as glance in Adrian’s direction. Adrian tried not to watch them, but he couldn’t help following Greg with his eyes for a second before snapping his focus back to Chelsea.
He forced his face into a blandly pleasant mask. “Well. Okay, so. Erin’s on her way back with the tool kit. I think we have enough boards cut to start on a new frame before the rest of the team arrives. We’ll begin with that. Hopefully once everyone else gets here, we can finish the frames by lunchtime and start working on some of the effects after lunch. Sound good?”
“Sounds great.”
Erin walked up with the toolbox, and the three of them settled down to work. Every now and then, Chelsea would cast a thoughtful look in Greg’s direction, followed by a more calculating one at Adrian. He cringed to think of what that might mean. The last thing he wanted was a well-meaning freshman psych major interfering between him and Greg. Even if he really did unintentionally sabotage his own chances at a healthy relationship—and he had to admit the available evidence pointed in that direction—such a chance did not exist with Greg. Physical attraction didn’t provide a solid enough foundation for a relationship.
Halfway through the morning, while leaning a newly built frame against the wall, Adrian felt the back of his neck prickle. Following a gut instinct, he turned his head. Greg’s gaze locked onto his from the other side of the room.
For a few heart-stopping seconds, everything went still. Adrian’s vision tunneled. The blood whooshed in his ears. Then Greg blinked and turned away, and the world started moving again.
Adrian stood without moving and breathed, in and out, in and out, until his pulse slowed and his racing mind quieted. He hadn’t really seen the intense longing and regret he thought he’d seen in Greg’s eyes. It was just his imagination. He couldn’t allow himself to think of such things.
Shaking off the lingering memory of Greg’s lips on his skin, Adrian hefted his hammer and went back to work.
~ * ~
    By the time the group stopped for lunch around one, Adrian remembered why he normally avoided being around large groups of people. Especially a bunch of theater kids who all knew each other and did not know—or, apparently, want to know—him. He hadn’t felt this out of place since the last time Christian dragged him to one of those ridiculous Mystic Society of the Scythe parties, where the level of worldweary pretentiousness was always thick enough to suck all the air from the room.
    Not that these kids were at all pretentious. They weren’t. But like gazelles sensing a hyena in their midst, they tended to shy away from him in nervous clumps. Even his own team—with the notable exceptions of Chelsea and Erin—interacted with him as little as possible. He wondered why that hadn’t happened the day before. Or if it had, and he just hadn’t noticed.
    A few not-so-subtle hints got the two girls to join the other kids for lunch and leave Adrian in