Return to the Beach House by Georgia Bockoven Read Free Book Online Page B

wet suit unzipped to his waist checking out the bike.
    “It’s okay,” he said, high praise in his circle of friends.
    The kid was a walking, talking California advertisement—the kind Christopher had pictured when he thought about what it would be like to grow up out here. He had sun-streaked blond hair that hung below his shoulders, a surfboard tucked under his arm, and a look that said his dream was to ride the biggest badass waves on every continent that had them.
    “I have a friend who’s selling his,” he said, “but I think he wants too much for it.”
    “Wish I could help, but as long as it gets me where I want to go, I’m satisfied.”
    “Yeah, that’s all I’m looking for too.”
    “What’s it like out there?” Christopher asked.
    “Mostly ankle-snappers, but you take what you can get.”
    “No—I mean, what’s it feel like?”
    He studied Christopher for several seconds. “I wouldn’t have picked you for one of the summer people.”
    Christopher decided it was a compliment—of sorts. “Thanks. I guess.”
    “It feels like I’m able to take a deep breath for the first time in months. A little like fresh powder in backcountry. And a whole lot like being with my own people again. But you have to understand, I spent the last nine months on a campus filled with people who think if you’re not batting or throwing or kicking a ball, it’s not a sport.”
    “Where back east?”
    “MIT. Stanford was my first choice, but MIT was my dad’s.” He grinned. “He said he thought I should see what another part of the country was like. He was worried about me cutting classes whenever the surf was up. My mom was terrified I was going to dump school entirely and work the waves at Ghost Tree and Cortes Bank until I got good enough to be invited to Maverick’s.”
    “Were they right?” Christopher knew Maverick’s was a premier, invitation-only surfing competition up the coast from Santa Cruz, and he assumed the others were places with waves big enough to give surfers a chance to make a name for themselves.
    “Yeah, probably. I’m going to give it another year, and if I still haven’t found anything that makes me want to stay, I’m going to transfer to Caltech. Cost’s about the same, and if this is supposed to be such a great time in my life, seems to me I should at least like where I’m going to school.” He picked up his board. “Gotta go. My friend’s loading up.”
    “Take it easy,” Christopher called after him.
    “You too.”
    “Thanks.”
    Christopher went back to studying the surfers, ending up with far more questions than answers. What determined how far they paddled out? How did they know which wave to catch? At what point did they leave the wave? And why did some surfers face right and others left?
    It wasn’t long—or at least it didn’t seem like a long time—before there were only a handful of boards still on the water. Christopher turned back to the parking lot, saw that it was almost empty, and realized how late it was. He unlocked the bike and reluctantly headed back, reaching the house at the same time a van pulled into the driveway next door. A girl with incredibly long legs wearing flip-flops and short cutoff jeans came around the van and opened the cargo door. She reached inside for a bright yellow, three-fin surfboard.
    She caught him staring and stopped what she was doing. “Hi. You must be Christopher.”
    Plainly Grams had been talking to the neighbors. “That’s me.”
    She carefully leaned her board against the house and came toward him. “Didn’t I see you at Manresa earlier?”
    How could he have missed her? “Yeah, that was me too.”
    She stopped and stood with her feet slightly apart, her hands in the back pockets of her shorts. “So, do you surf?”
    “Not much opportunity where I come from.”
    “Want to learn?”
    He blinked in surprise. It was one thing to strike up a conversation with a guy at the beach, but having a girl who looked like