Summer Nights Read Online Free PDF Page B

carpeted with a small Oriental rug in vivid reds and blues. Pale wooden bannisters gleamed under the sunshine pouring in through the skylights.
    From the time she was a toddler, Anne had been taught to make an “entrance” on those stairs. Her parents were camera addicts. They had pictures of Anne posing on the higher landing in her new Snoopy pajamas—age three—Christmas Eve. Pictures of Anne in her princess costume—age seven—Halloween. Pictures of Anne dressed for tennis or dances or the movies—age thirteen to eighteen—going out with Con Winter.
    There was no sun tonight, only the soft dimmed lights recessed in the vaulted ceilings. Anne made her last grand entrance and her parents, as always, stood at the bottom of the stairs, cameras ready.
    Who looks at all those photographs? Anne thought. Not me. I’ve never opened a single album. She wondered if while she was gone her parents would sit together on the sofa and turn the pages of the albums, staring at the daughter who was grown and gone. It was a sad, rainy day thought.
    Con stood where he always stood, a few feet inside the front door, ready for a quick exit, head cocked to the side, eyes fastened on the spot where she would first appear.
    Anne knew her own beauty. But she often forgot Con’s. He had a fluid, dark handsomeness, unexpressive as a statue. He was simply there, resting, for you to admire. His eyes were heavy-lidded, sleepy, and his hair thick and softly falling, so that Anne’s continual impulse was to sweep it from his eyes. She remembered in Ancient History staring at the photograph of the sculpture “Apollo Belvedere” and thinking— it’s Con.
    She paused on the landing from long habit. Her thin, gauzy Indian dress hung like a blue cloud, its narrow fringe of embroidery like jewels below her throat. She had left her hair down, and the golden silk of it slid over her shoulders.
    Anne never saw Con without falling in love with him all over again. Don’t let it happen tonight! she thought, trying not to see how he needed a haircut again, how he looked tired, how he must want comfort.
    “You look beautiful,” Con said, in that husky voice of his, as if he were filled with emotion. Experience told Anne that it was not emotion, it was just that Con had a husky voice. But she could not resist him and went straight to him, sliding the hair off his forehead and leaving her fingers momentarily caught in his hair. Her mother snapped a picture. Anne swallowed and looked away from him. “Where are we going?” she asked.
    He linked his arm through hers. “Dinner.” He smiled at her. They were exactly the same height, and their eyes always met. For years, Anne had thought this meant they were on the same emotional and mental wavelength.
    Con wrapped a lock of her hair around his own finger and drew it in a golden mustache above his lips. “I love your hair down,” he said.
    Con was good at compliments. Anne’s mother and his own mother had been teaching him. It did not come naturally. Anne was very touched. She knew he had rehearsed what to say. Because I matter to him, she thought. Oh, I am going to miss Con so much!
    They walked out of the house. Con had been allowed to borrow his father’s new convertible. Anne clapped her hands with delight. She ran back in to get a scarf to tie over her hair to keep it from getting too tangled, and they drove off, Con going fast, the breeze pulling at them, and the blaring radio audible only when they stopped at corners. He tossed her a grin, grabbed her hand, and kissed it quick before putting his hand back on the wheel.
    Her heart was tossed back in his lap.
    For the first time she wondered what she was doing—abandoning everything that was love, that was friendship?
    I am traveling to strange cities with an old lady when Con loves me and wants me here, she thought. Maybe—maybe—
    She wrenched her mind off it. She had to look away from Con in order to think of other things. It was going to be