The Surfing Lesson (Digital Original) Read Online Free PDF

out his hand, fingers stained with nicotine. “Do I know you?”
    “No,” Margot said. “No, I don’t think we’ve met. I just… well, I’ve heard about you. You teach surfing?”
    “At Cisco,” he said. “To the punks with rich mothers.”
    “Oh,” Margot said. She crunched her water bottle, which was now empty. “Do you know who the guy is?”
    “That guy there?” Elvis asked. “Yeah, I know who that is. Everyone knows who that is.”
    “Who is he?” Margot asked. Thinking: Boy Scout, good guy, doting father, amazing cook. He speaks Japanese and gives great foot rubs. Thinking: Nobody knows where it comes from and nobody knows where it goes.
    “It’s Drum… Drum… shit, I forget his last name. But I’ll tell you what…” Elvis leaned closer to Margot as if to let her in on a secret.
    “What?” Margot said.
    “He’s the greatest surfer this island has ever seen,” Elvis said. “Watching him is like watching fucking Baryshnikov.”
    Margot nodded, wishing Elvis had been able to tell her something she didn’t already know.
    At that moment, Drum stood up and grabbed his board, which was sticking straight up out of the sand. He ran with it to the water line, and then began to paddle out.
    “Lucky you,” Elvis said. “You’re going to witness.”
    Margot took a deep breath. Curtis had come in off the water, and he was now standing next to his mother, both of them watching Drum.
    Drum let a few waves go. He had always been picky. Because of her vantage point up on the dune, Margot saw the one he would take even before he did. She watched him sense its approach, she saw his muscles tense. She knew the man so well. If they separated and divorced this year and he moved to the west coast, and she next saw him on a surfboard twenty years from now, she would still know which wave he would take.
You need to be your own best friend
, her mother had told her. But Drum was her best friend, Margot couldn’t deny it, and she was going to lose him.
    “There he goes!” Elvis said.
    Drum was moving, he was up, he was riding the wave low and sweet all the way across the break, going for maximum speed rather than flair. He made the board act like a razor, cutting the wave cleanly across the middle. Margot was sure Hadley was swooning on the beach the way Margot used to swoon and wanted to swoon now. Elvis let out a whoop, and the sound attracted Drum’s attention. He looked up at the dune and saw Elvis—and Margot—and something in his face changed. He lost his balance, and tumbled headfirst into the crashing foam.
    Elvis turned to Margot. “You don’t know him, but he sure seems to know you.”
    Margot didn’t have a reply to that, but none was needed. Elvis rushed down onto the beach to greet Hadley.
    Margot waited until Drum surfaced. His head popped up and his eyes sought hers out. She thought,
Yes, I’m here. I’m still here
.
    He waved to her. She gave him a thumbs-up and called out, “Good ride!” Later, when she talked to him, she might use those very words, she might say,
We had a good ride, Drum. We had a good ride.
Or she might come up with better words. She had plenty of time to think about it on the hot, lonely run for home.

Preview of Beautiful Day
    In June 2013 Reagan Arthur Books will publish Elin Hilderbrand’s
Beautiful Day.
Following is an excerpt from the novel’s opening pages.

Jennifer Bailey Carmichael and Stuart James Graham, along with their families, invite you to share in the celebration of their wedding.
    Saturday, July 20, 2013, 4:00 p.m.
    St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, Fair Street
    Nantucket Island
    Reception to follow at the Carmichael home, 34 Orange Street
    RSVP by June 1

The Notebook, Page 1
    Dear Jenna,
    I have finally reached the point with my prognosis where I accept that there are certain things I will not live to see. I will not see the day your father retires from the law firm (he always promised me he would retire on his 65th birthday, safe to say that