He paced the floor and wondered how it would all go down. He kept checking every timepiece within reach or eyesight. Then at long last, at 6:44 P.M. right on the dot, sunset on Halloween night, the door to his bedroom closet eased open.

Beau’s heart was pounding out of his chest as Cory emerged from the gloaming. He was glorious. Tall, tanned. He had thick hair swept back from his face. It had subtle blond highlights and was shaggy in the back. His acid-washed jeans and Members Only jacket completed the look. He had most definitely died in 1987. Beau was surprised that Cory appeared to be a man ten years older than himself. He’d always thought of Cory as his own age but this was borderline DILF territory and he liked it. A lot.

And Cory’s smile. That devilishly disarming smile flashed across space and time—across the very fabric of life and death. That was the kind of smile you would cross heaven and Earth just to catch a glimpse of, and here it was, live and in person in Beau’s own bedroom. Well, he supposed it was Cory’s bedroom, too, once upon a time.

“Yesterday upon the stair,” Beau recited. “I saw a man who wasn’t there.”

“He wasn’t there again today,” Cory replied.

“Oh, how I wish he’d always stay,” Beau said with a love-drunk smile.

“Is that how that’s supposed to go?” Cory asked as he glided forward, his progress silent as a whisper.

“Something like that.” Beau’s heart thudded in its cage of meat and bone. He wondered if Cory was solid or just an apparition.

They had discussed this moment several times. They’d planned what they could do when they were finally able to be in the same room. But now that the time was at hand, Beau was overcome with shyness.

Cory slowly closed the distance between them, but did not initiate contact. Beau scanned for evidence of either his actual physical presence, or of his being just a vision. Beau’s eyes focused on the artery throbbing in Cory’s neck. Cory’s breath caused the tiny hairs of Beau’s sideburns to sway with each inhale and exhale. Then beneath the regular aromas of his apartment, Beau smelled the delicious scent of warm male skin. There was no denying the living, breathing, devastatingly handsome man he was aching for less than an inch away.

Beau angled his head upward just a bit and allowed his lips to part. That was all the encouragement Cory needed, and he scooped up Beau into the deepest and tenderest kiss Beau had ever experienced.

With one kiss, Cory had healed every broken heart Beau had ever had, smoothed over every hurt feeling and awkward memory. It all simply didn’t matter anymore. The whole universe dissolved and there was only his lips, his arms, his sweet appreciative moans, their hearts beating in sync.

When their lips eventually parted, Beau marveled, “You’re real. You’re here!”