The Surfing Lesson

by Elin Hilderbrand

Genres: Women's Fiction

Synopsis

A digital edition short story about a wife coming to terms with her fading marriage, based on a subplot from Elin Hilderbrand's forthcoming novel BEAUTIFUL DAY

Margot's reservoir of romantic feelings for her husband Drum is running dry. But while the family is on vacation in Nantucket, Margot finds an opportunity to potentially regain her romantic love for her husband - in the form of Hadley Axelram, his ex-girlfriend. She is counting on jealousy as a relationship defibrillator.

But after forcing her surfing-god husband to make plans for a surfing lesson with Hadley and her son, Margot is left to reminisce about the summer she fell in love with Drum, and the unexpected blossoming of their relationship. When she sees Drum and Hadley spending time together, will the spark reignite - and will her marriage be saved? Or will she find that love is truly gone from this relationship?

This touching short story about a poignant stage in a marriage explores the backstory of Margot Carmichael, one of the stars in Elin Hilderbrand's new novel BEAUTIFUL DAY.

Release date: May 14, 2013

Publisher: Little, Brown and Company

Print pages: 48

Sample

If anything was going to change Margot’s mind about divorcing her husband, Drum, it was the presence of Hadley Axelram ahead of them in line at the Juice Bar on the third night of their Nantucket vacation. The day had been hot and sunny, with a high of 89 degrees, the second hottest August 18 on record. There were forty-five or fifty people packed into the front of the shop and snaking down Broad Street, creating a traffic hazard for the Jeeps and SUVs streaming off the late ferry. Margot’s attention was consumed with making sure her three children didn’t get hit by an overly excited driver, and so it was surprising that she even noticed Hadley Axelram, although for the past ten years Margot had experienced a personal barometric drop whenever the woman was nearby.

Storm approaching.

Hadley Axelram had dated Drum off and on for the three years before Margot met him. Hadley Axelram had a certain look—to Margot, it was the look of a twelve-year-old Thai boy—which Drum and certain other men found themselves powerless to resist. Hadley was five foot two and weighed ninety pounds. She had no chest and no ass; back in the days when Margot used to see her in a bikini, she had been startled by the sharp protruding bones of Hadley’s hips and rib cage. Hadley wore her dark hair in a pixie cut, which made her brown eyes look enormous and sad, like the eyes of an extraterrestrial stranded billions of miles from home. Hadley always wore a choker. Years ago it had been a black suede cord wrapped around a jade green stone that nestled in the hollow of Hadley’s neck. But now, the choker was caramel-colored leather embellished with recognizable gold hardware—Hermès. When Hadley reached up to idly finger her choker, Margot noticed that her nails—longer than anyone would expect on a person so obviously striving for androgyny—were painted the purplish-blue of Concord grapes.

Drum had spent much of those three on-again, off-again years competing for Hadley’s affection with his best friend, Colin O’Mara, who had been the second finest surfer on Nantucket, after Drum. Drum was as graceful and elegant as a person could be on a board. “Like watching fucking Baryshnikov,” Margot had once overheard a spectator on the beach say. Colin’s surfing, on the other hand, was all about brute strength and the r. . .