Chapter 1

He’s laughing. His umber brown bangs fall across his forehead, and his eyes crinkle, making the sapphire blue irises almost invisible, but I know they’re there. I’ve spent hours gazing into them after all. With long slender fingers, he plays the teasing game, letting them ghost over the expanse of his pale, smooth torso. Resting them next to his small pink nipples without touching them. Letting themtravel from his chest, along his flat—almost concave—stomach, before they circle his bellybutton fora second. Then they continue downward, downward, downward, until…

“Like what you see, Phoeeeenix?” he asks, voice full of glee as he draws out my name in the way he knows drives me crazy. A shiver travels down my spine as he wiggles his narrow jean-clad hips, and I want to grab him and pull him toward me and grind against his pelvis. The angel wings fastened to his back rustle, and I don’t know where to look. At his dear face, his half-naked, enticing body, or at the wings that suit him so well.

My Gabriel. My angel. That’s what I’ve always called him. And today he surprised me with real, honest-to-goodness wings.

He holds out his hands and beckons me closer with his index finger. “Come closer, I want to touch you.”

I take a step. Two people can play that game.

“Clooooser.”

I take another step, but he grows impatient. He reaches out to me, snags my wrist, and pulls me flush to his body.

“Stop teasing and kiss me.”

* * * *

I don’t jerk awake with my hand pressed to my chest like people always do in movies. Instead, I’m awoken by a sting of grief in my heart as I try to cling to the image of his smiling face. Of the feeling of his soft skin under my palms. I’m desperate to do what he wants and press my mouth against his pouty,pink rosebud lips. I want to slide my arms around him and kiss him until we’re both out of breath. I want to stay with him forever and never let him go.

But it’s impossible.

His vivid image wanes like the colors of an old photograph and I roll over on my stomach and pull the blanket over my head.

It was just a dream.

Again.

As I bury my wet cheeks in my pillow, I inhale deeply. As if hoping the scent of his familiar citrusy shampoo would still linger after all this time. But all I can detect is a faint smell of my fabric softener, and my foolish heart cracks open in my chest and poisons my bloodstream with sadness.

I didn’t have to check the date to know what today was. His birthday. The day he would have turned twenty-five.

It was also five years since I saw him last.

Forty-three thousand eight hundred hours since I lost him forever.

I still struggle most days with the loss of him. Our parents had been neighbors and we’d known each other our entire lives. He was my best friend. My reason for living. The purest soul ever to walk the earth.

Why was he taken from me?

That day—that sunny Sunday in June—will forever be etched into my memory. It was his twentieth birthday and our tiny southern hometown was arranging its first ever Pride parade. If someone had askedme just a couple years earlier, I would have said it was impossible, that our hick town would never be progressive enough to let gays roam the streets unapologetically.

He said it was the best birthday present he’d ever gotten—It’s progress, Phoenix, aren’t you happy?—but I had something for him that I planned on giving him later that I hoped would be an even better gift. Something important. Too bad I never got the chance.

We attended the parade, of course. We were young and in love and wanted to scream it from the rooftops toanyone willing to listen. I had bought a new T-shirt for the occasion; it was black and had a pink unicorn standing on a cloud, pooping a rainbow. As always, Gabriel was much braver than me. All he wore was a pair of white, low-slung jeans that hung precariously on his hips, and a pair of angel wings strapped to his back. They were innocently white—pristine—and the feathers fluttered as he moved.

“You always say I’m your angel”, he said with a smile brighter than the sun, and my heart swelled to double its size, making me fear it would break free of the confines of my ribcage.

He was more beautiful than ever, and I wanted to ditch the parade and drag him back to our tiny apartmentand spend hours worshipping his body. I wanted to rain kisses on his hairless chest. Bury my face in the soft skin on his belly, cup his ass, and inhale the scent of his sex. I wanted to make love to him; he would have looked magnificent riding my cock wearing the wings with his head thrown back in passion, exposing his long delicate neck with its protruding Adam’s apple.