Page 11 of The Art of Dying

I sat back on one of the six mismatched patio chairs my parents kept on their back porch. The fire pit burned bright, the ice-cold wind pushing the smoke away from us. “I don’t want her to think I’m desperate.”

“But you kind of are.”

I shifted, feeling caught. “Just for her, though. I called her the next day. We chatted.”

“Brother, that was days ago.”

“She has my number. If she wants to call me, she will.”

“Pussy,” he said before chugging his beer. He tossed the empty bottle in a pail with the eleven others he’d brought and systematically emptied.

“Damn it, Sully,” I said, frowning. “I don’t wanna scare her off.”

I heard movement behind me seconds before I heard a familiar voice.

“You don’t scare me,” she said from behind.

I turned around, feeling a sense of dread that immediately went away with her smile. But that warm, fuzzy feeling that crept up disappeared when I turned to face my friend.

Sully wore a shit-eating grin, nearly all the tiny square teeth in his head showing.

“You told her, didn’t you?” I asked.

“He sure did,” Mack said, perching her feet on the edge of the bricks surrounding the fire pit. Under her thick coat I could see she was still in her scrubs, effortlessly beautiful despite the exhaustion in her eyes.

I popped off the cap of one of my bottles and handed it to her.

“Thanks,” she said, taking a swig.

Good God she was breathtaking, even after a late shift and her hair in a messy bun. Other than a few pieces of copper strands that had fallen, her neck was totally vulnerable, her throat moving as she swallowed. I looked away and tried to push the thoughts from my head. I had to have her, to figure out some way to make her mine. I’d never felt so desperate about a woman in my life.

We sat around the fire for another two hours listening to George Strait, Garth Brooks, and Brooks & Dunn CDs on my trusty old Sony portable disc player and laughing about Sully’s stupid ass stories of us in middle and high school. Mack just listened, smiling the whole time, relaxed and happy. She pulled her coat tighter, her hands bare. I thought about asking if she was warm enough, but she seemed content and I’d rather cut off my trigger finger than change that.

“And you knocked him smooth out,” Sully said, holding up the bottle he’d stolen from my stash.

“Almost as good as the one about you lighting your butt hole on fire,” Mack said.

“Almost, but those two going at it for ten solid minutes was the best fight I ever saw, between my two best good friends. I was a proud man.”

“I miss him,” I said, speaking of our friend Kurt.

“Yeah,” Sully said, his line of sight falling to the ground. “Every day.”

“Did Kurt get out of this godforsaken town?” Mack asked.

“He was Army,” I said. “He fought harder to live at home than he did when he was deployed. Just when I thought he was going to be all right, he checked out.”

Mack swallowed. “God, I’m sorry.”

I shrugged.

“You’re different, too,” Sully said. “Since we lost your parents.”

“Yeah… I haven’t felt like myself since the funeral.”

“I was worried about you for a minute, brother.”

“That’s why I was glad to finally get orders for Camp Pendleton. I got a month’s leave to move there. Gives me time to come back here, think, get the house back in order,” I said.

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