Burning Midnight Read Online Free PDF

Sully thought she was going to hug him, but she stopped short and held up her palm for a high five.
    Confused, he slapped her hand.
    “Good for you. I wish you could have gotten on the stage to bend that little bastard Holliday’s finger back, but good for you.”
    “Thanks, Mom.”
    Grinning, Mike patted Sully’s shoulder. “I’m gonna get going.” He made a fist. “Way to go, Sully.”
    Laurie gave Sully a wave and followed Mike out.
    “You’ve got seven thousand and some hits already,” Mom said as the front door clicked closed. She studied Sully’s face. “Come on, let’s get your nose cleaned up. No broken bones?”
    “Dom took most of the punches.”
    “Bull.
Shit,
” Mom said, mimicking Dom’s Italian American Yonkers delivery. “That was priceless.” She looked back at Sully as they climbed the stairs. “He’s okay, though?”
    “He’s fine. Just some stitches.”
    Once Sully’s nose was bandaged, they ate dinner on tray tables at the couch, watching a rerun of
CSI: NY
like they always did. Pretty much all they watched were
CSI
reruns, plus
Marble Hunters
and a few of the copycat sphere-hunting shows.
    Dinner was spaghetti, which was definitely
not
like always. For as long as Sully could remember, Friday had been take-out pizza night. Sully didn’t say anything; his mom was hurting enough.
    Sully only half watched the show. Seeing Laurie had stirred up some of the memories from that time when he’d been borderline obsessed with her. It had been the first time Sully truly understood how painful love could be. He’d been shocked by how much it hurt. Until Laurie, having a girlfriend had just been something you did, like an extension of being friends.
    His first girlfriend, if you could call her that, had been Kaitlin Bie. They’d both been nine when Kaitlin’s older brother dared them to kiss on the swing set in their backyard. Kaitlin’s dad had seen them from the living room window, though, and their relationship ended right then and there.
    Then there’d been Jen Posner, when he was thirteen. After walking around with a crush on Jen for a couple of months, Sully had mustered the nerve to send her a candy-gram—one of those Valentine’s Day fund-raisers where you pay a dollar to send a flower or candy to someone during class. She’d sent one back the very next period. Unless Sully counted the peck he’d given Kaitlin on the swings, Jen was the first girl he’d ever kissed. He’d been so blown away by the sheer act of kissing a cute girl with big brown eyes and exactly the right amount of freckles that it had taken him about two months to realize he was bored out of his mind whenever she was around and they weren’t kissing.
    Breaking up with her, seeing the disappointment on her face, had been awful. It was nothing compared with the day Laurie broke up with him, though. Laurie had seemed like his entire world back then. Every love song he heard had been about Laurie. Her face had floated like an overlay on Sully’s vision all day long. Since Laurie, he’d hung out with a couple of girls as more than friends, but it had never gotten close to serious with any of them.
    After dinner Sully went to his room and read through his messages, shooting texts back to friends, answering the same question over and over, about where he learned the pinkie move. He had no idea where he’d learned it; in the heat of the moment he’d seen that finger on his shoulder and wanted to snap it off the guy’s hand.
    It should have felt good, reading message after message about what a badass he was, but it didn’t. When you cut right through it, Holliday had kicked them to the curb. His bodyguards had taken out the trash while the audience cheered.
    Sully sat up on his bed, then went over to his little desk, where the used Cherry Red sat on a shot glass that served as its pedestal. He picked it up, turned it in his hand.
    It was hard to believe this marble and its only match had reseeded the entire