Summer Days and Summer Nights Read Free

little goat. Go on with you.”
    Why not? Gracie wiped her palms on her shorts and ambled up to the booth. She felt bolder than usual. Maybe because nothing she said to Eli Cuddy mattered. It wasn’t like, if she made a fool of herself, he’d have anyone to tell.
    â€œHey,” she said. He blinked up at her. She had no idea what to do with her hands, so she planted them on her hips, then worried she looked like she was about to start a pep routine and dropped them. “You’re Eli, right?”
    â€œYeah.”
    â€œI’m Gracie.”
    â€œI know. You work at Youvenirs.”
    â€œOh,” she said. “Right.” Gracie worked summer mornings there, mostly because Henny had taken pity on her and let her show up to dust things for a few dollars an hour. Had Eli come in before?
    He was waiting. Gracie wished she’d planned this out better. Saying she believed in monsters felt sort of like showing someone the collection of stuffed animals she kept on her bed, like she was announcing, I’m still a little kid. I’m still afraid of things that can curl around your leg and drag you under .
    â€œYou know the Loch Ness monster?” she blurted.
    Eli’s brow creased. “Not personally.”
    Gracie plunged ahead. “You think it could be real?”
    Eli closed his book carefully and studied her with very serious, very blue eyes, the furrow between his eyebrows deepening. His lashes were so blond they were almost silver. “Did you look through my library record?” he asked. “Because that’s a federal crime.”
    â€œWhat?” It was Gracie’s turn to scrutinize Eli. “No, I didn’t spy on you. I just asked you a question.”
    â€œOh. Well. Good. Because I’m not totally sure it’s a crime anyway.”
    â€œWhat are you looking at that you’re so worried people will see? Porn?”
    â€œVolumes of it,” he said, in that same serious voice. “As much porn as I can get. The Little Spindle Library’s collection is small but thoughtfully curated.”
    Gracie snorted, and Eli’s mouth tugged up a little.
    â€œOkay, perv. Annalee said you might know something about Idgy Pidgy and that kind of stuff.”
    â€œAnnalee?”
    Gracie bobbed her chin over to the booth by the window, where a nervous-looking man in a Hawaiian shirt had seated himself across from Annalee and was whispering something to her as he tore up a napkin. “This is her place.”
    â€œI like cryptozoology,” Eli said. Off her blank look, he continued, “Bigfoot. The Loch Ness Monster. Ogopogo.”
    Gracie hesitated. “You think all of those are real?”
    â€œNot all of them. Statistically. But no one was sure the giant squid was real until they started washing up on beaches in New Zealand.”
    â€œReally?”
    Eli gave her a businesslike nod. “There’s a specimen at the Natural History Museum in London that’s twenty-eight feet long. They think that’s a small one.”
    â€œNo shit,” Gracie breathed.
    Another precise nod. “No. Shit.”
    This time Gracie laughed outright. “Hold up,” she said, “I want a Blizzard. Don’t go anywhere.”
    He didn’t.
    *   *   *
    That summer took on a wavy, loopy, lazing shape for Gracie. Mornings she “worked” at Youvenirs, rearranging knickknacks in the windows and pointing the rare customer toward the register. At noon she’d meet up with Eli and they’d go to the library or ride bikes to her cove, though Eli thought another sighting there was unlikely.
    â€œWhy would it come back here?” he asked as they stared out at the sun-dappled water.
    â€œIt was here before. Maybe it likes the shade.”
    â€œOr maybe it was just passing through.”
    Most of the time they talked about Idgy Pidgy. Or at least that was where their conversations always