Shine Not Burn Read Online Free PDF

I’d describe myself.   I’d spent a lot of years when I was a teenager wishing I could be shaped more like a model with long legs and a well-muscled tummy, but lately I’d come to admire my more feminine silhouette.   I nodded at my reflection and faced the mirror again.   If a guy can’t appreciate what I have to offer, he can just keep on walkin’.
    I had some time yet.   I was only twenty-five.   My plans were still on track, even if Luke wasn’t on board with them anymore.   Junior partner by beginning of next year.   Married by the year after.   Babies a couple years after that.   And then full partner at the firm.   Bam.   Done with all the hard stuff by thirty-five, and then smooth sailing from then on out.
    I looked at my wet head in the mirror and shrugged, my hair several inches past my shoulders and grown-out bangs tickling my eyes.   There are plenty of fish in the sea.   There has to be one out there who’d want me and who’d find my lifeplan appealing.   It was the perfect plan, I was sure of it.   I’d carefully developed it and worked towards accomplishing it for over a decade.   It was a life journey a million guys would love to be a part of.   Now all I had to do was find the right guy.   The one who would stick.   I ignored the specters that tried to rise up out of my past to haunt me with the misery I’d worked so hard to leave behind.   Not today, bad memories.   Today, I am invincible and I will have fun.
    I walked into the other room, noticing that Candice and Kelly were both out on the balcony with drinks in their hands.   I joined them, my breath momentarily taken from me as the intense heat of the day hit me full force.   It felt like walking into an open oven set at four hundred and fifty degrees.   I took Candice’s drink from her hand.   “Don’t drink and cut hair, that’s my motto.”   I took a big swig of it and nearly gagged, the alcohol setting my throat on fire.
    Kelly laughed before lifting her glass in my direction and taking a long sip of her own cocktail.
    “Holy crap,” I said, my voice severely strained, “what was that?   Lighter fluid?   Did I just drink lighter fluid?”   I breathed out several times loudly and held my hand up as a caution.   “No one light a match.   I’ll blow up or combust or something.”
    Candice waved my concerns away.   “That only happens if you hold in your gas.   Come sit down.”   She gestured to the chair in front of her.
    My hand froze in the middle of putting the glass to my lips again.   I pulled it away.   “Uhhhh, what?”
    Kelly was standing very still too, a confused expression coming over her face.
    “You heard me,” said Candice, sounding very confident.   “If you hold in your gas, if you don’t break wind, you can spontaneously combust.”   She looked at us like we were the stupid ones. “It’s a medical fact, look it up.”
    “Again. A reminder of how your talents were wasted by you not going into medicine.” I shook my head in sheer amazement.   “Where did you learn this particular fact, may I ask?”
    “Why are you asking?” asked Kelly, sighing.   “You know you’re not going to like the answer.”
    “If you must know, I saw it on Southpark,” said Candice, lifting her chin in the air.
    “Southpark,” I deadpanned.   I lifted up a finger and pantomimed cleaning out my ear.   “We’re getting our scientific medical facts from Southpark episodes now?”   Candice scared me often.   This was one of those moments where I wondered how she got through a single day without getting herself run over by a car or a person on a bike.   Or a toddler on a tricycle.
    “Hey, say what you want, but they bring up a lot of real world situations on that show and deal with them in a way that gets people talking.”   She pushed on my shoulder.   “Now sit.   I have magic to do here.”   She lifted up a lock of my hair.   “Desperate times call for desperate