Page 1 of The Art of Dying

Day 1.

chapter one.

Kitsch

Anger is magic. A good rage can make the pain disappear when you land a punch, when a relationship ends, or when you’re benching so much weight your asshole feels like it’s about to punch through your boxer briefs.

Yeah, I said it.

Anger can help you fight a fighter and leave a lover, and that anger—along with at least seven shots of Jameson Whiskey—is what helped when Cubby, a local, low-level Hell’s Angels wannabe sucker punched me in the basement bar of Bart’s Tavern.

“What the…” I said from the floor, immediately scrambling to my feet to tackle him back to the ground.

Sometimes my fist connected with his face, sometimes I missed and felt my knuckles pound the stained concrete behind him, peeling back the skin from my knuckles a little bit each time.

“Okay, okay!” Sully said, pulling me back. “You’ve made your point, Kitsch!” I went for Cubby again, but Sully yanked me back by the shirt. “Your C.O. gets wind of this and you’re fucking toast! Stop!”

I lowered my head, breathing hard. Cubby might’ve gotten one in on me, but now he looked more like Sloth fromTheGooniesthan the bully from algebra class.

He crawled to his feet and then limped toward the stairs, one of his eyes already swollen shut.

“This fuckin’ guy!” I yelled to no one. “We’re not in high school anymore, ya fuckin’ hillbilly!”

“Was that really necessary?” a woman at the end of the bar asked. Even though she was annoyed, her accent was charming, even friendly. Definitely not a Bay Stater.

“And you are?”

She ignored my question. “You know that’s Alecia’s brother. He was just defending her honor.”

Her elbow was perched on the edge of the bar, the ivory sweater she wore hung off one shoulder. She looked straight into my eyes, completely unaffected by the fact that I’d just bloodied a man’s face right in front of her.

I kept trying to think of a response while she stared at me wholly unimpressed, but I kept getting lost in the biggest, greenest eyes I’d ever seen. She was a stunner and petite, maybe five-foot-five, her copper hair falling several inches past her shoulders in soft curls, her sweater and jeans hugging subtle curves that would most certainly cause a distraction anywhere she went. She was the kind of beautiful that made a man want to hold his breath. Inexplicably, I decided to make myself sound like a typical Masshole from the southern outskirts of Boston.

“I don’t give a rat’s ass who it was,” I said, wiping the blood from my mouth. “He punched me in the face.”

The woman didn’t flinch as she said her next words, staring me down with fearlessness I’d never seen anywhere but on the battlefield. “You fucked his sister.” The F bomb she’d just dropped sounded out of place saturated by her sweet southern twang. “We may be in the first decade of the twenty-first century, but brothers will never stop feeling a certain way about that.”

Sully stood next to me, his extra-large pot belly hanging over his belt. He hooked his arm around my neck and patted my chest with his free hand, smiling at little red. “In his defense, Kitsch has fucked everyone’s sister.”

I turned to him, blank-faced. “Shut up.” I stared at him a little longer. “And get a fuckin’ haircut. You’re startin’ to look like Billy Ray Cyrus.”

Sully smiled. “Thank you. We don’t all have to keep it high and tight.”

The woman walked past me, headed for the door, and without thinking, my hand shot out to grab her wrist. “Who are you?”

She looked down at my fingers wrapped all the way around her delicate arm, and in one quick motion, she slid her wrist from my grasp and slapped me. Hard.

“What the hell was that for?” I asked, grinning. I wasn’t about to do what I wanted to, yelp while holding my hand against my throbbing cheek—the same one motorbike boy had just hit.

“I don’t know you, so don’t touch me.”

Unable to keep my eyes off her, my gaze followed her every step as she pushed through the double doors of the bar and turned the corner for the stairs.

“She fuckin’ hates you, bro,” Sully said, laughing through his words.

“Seriously, who is she?” I asked, still staring at the doorway. “I think I’m in love.”

“That’s Mack. Well, her name’s Karen Mackenzie, but she hates it. Don’t call her that.”

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