Check & Mate

Defne orders me to stay home on Monday, to sleep off my “chess hangover” and the “tournament crud.” It’s a rare free day without my sisters underfoot, and when I go to bed on Sunday night, I’m fully committed to drooling on my pillow till midmorning, then going to the Krispy Kreme drive- through in my PJs to purchase my weight in donuts, then eating 90 percent of them with Mom while we watch Hoarders on YouTube.

I fail miserably.

For reasons that may have to do with the check hidden in the inside pocket of my hobo bag, I’m up at six thirty, scrolling down ChessWorld.com, browsing through every game Malte Koch has ever played.

There are a lot, and he’s a damn good player.

But, also: he’s not without exploitable weaknesses. I’m half comatose, eyes full of sleep boogers, and yet I’m finding blunders in his games.

Also, also: I have a new archenemy. I like it better when women stick to their own tournaments. My life mission is to repeat the words back to him while I checkmate his useless, bloated king.

“Pleeeease, drive us to school!” Darcy asks after giving me her back to fart in my direction— her new favorite morning ritual. In the car she talks my ear off: male seahorses carry the offspring, jellyfish are immortal, pigs’ orgasms last thirty minutes (mental note: install parental control software). Sabrina sits quietly, headphones in her ears, head bent to her phone. I try to remember whether she has said anything this morning. Then I try to remember the last time I’ve had a conversation with her.

Mmm.

“Hey,” I tell her at drop- off, “you get out an hour before Darcy, right?”

“Yeah.” She sounds defensive.

“I’ll come get you early, then.”

“Why?” Now she sounds defensive and dubious.

“We can do something together.”

“Like what?” The defensiveness is still there, but laced with something else. Hope, and maybe a bit of excitement. “We could get coffee at that place on the corner.”

“Okay. Decaf, though,” I add.

She frowns. “Why?”

“You’re too young for caffeine.” The frown deepens. I’m losing her. “I can help you with your homework,” I offer, trying to revive her enthusiasm.

“I drink coffee all the time. And I’ve been doing my homework alone for years. If you haven’t noticed, I’m not nine anymore, Mal.” She rolls her eyes, and I know I’ve lost her. “I’ll just hang out outside school with the other derby girls so you don’t have to do two trips.” She slips out of the car without saying goodbye, and I seethe about the youths till I get to the credit union.

I’d love to deposit the check to the family account, but I can’t think of a believable excuse that won’t involve me mentioning chess. Mom, I won the Powerball. I microwaved Darcy’s oatmeal for too long and it turned into a diamond. I have a secret writing career in furry erotica. Yeah. No.

I pay outstanding bills, deposit what’s left in my account, and run errands that would usually fall on Mom. And if in the grocery line, at the recycling center, by the library’s return desk, while I wait for Mom to finish working to have lunch with her— if whenever I have ten minutes to myself I spend them analyzing Koch’s games on my phone, well . . .

I shouldn’t. Boundaries and all that. Chess is just a job, and today I’m off. I made a promise to myself.

But it’s okay, a voice rebuts. You’re thinking of prize money. You’re not falling in love with chess again. You’re firmly out of love.

Yeah. Exactly. Precisely. That.

I pick up my sisters midafternoon and I’m aggressively thrown into the Grade 7 Cinematic Universe, which is more riveting than a Brazilian soap opera.

“. . . so Jimmy was like, ‘Pepto pink makes me throw up,’ and Tina was like, ‘My shirt is Pepto pink,’ and Jimmy was like, ‘No, your shirt’s a good pink,’ and Tina googled Pepto pink and it was the same color as her shirt, and Jimmy was like, ‘What do you want me to say?’ and Tina was like, ‘Admit that you hate my shirt.’ ”

“And what did Jimmy say?” I ask, pulling up our driveway, genuinely entertained.

“He was all, like— ”

“There’s a guy on the porch,” Sabrina interrupts us.

“Probably the mailman,” I say distractedly. “What did Jimmy do?”

“That’s not the mailman,” Sabrina says. “I mean, I wish.”

I look at where she’s pointing. Then immediately flatten myself as deep into the driver’s seat as I can go. “Shit.”

“Should you be saying shit in front of us?” Darcy asks.

“Yeah— what happened to the pedagogical modeling of appropriate behaviors?”

Impossible. He’s not here. He can’t be. I’m hallucinating. Paranoid delusions. Yes. From the chemicals in the Twizzlers. All that dye.

“ Mal. Mal?”

“What’s wrong with her?”

“A stroke, maybe? She’s starting to be of a certain age.”

“Call nine- one- one!”

“On it.”

“No— Sabrina, don’t call nine- one- one. I’m fine. I just thought I saw . . .” I glance to the porch again. He is still there.

Nolan.

Sawyer.

Is.

On.

My.

Porch.

Well. It’s either Sawyer or an alien wearing his skin. I’m kind of rooting for option two.

“Do you know him?” Sabrina asks.

“She sure looks like she does,” Darcy says. “Is he another one of your sex friends?”

“Maybe he’s her stalker,” Sabrina offers.

“Mal, you have a stalker?”

Sabrina snorts. “You didn’t let me watch You because I’m fourteen, and now I find out that you have your own stalker?”

“Should we run him over? Does blood stain wood?”

“No!” I raise my hands. “He’s not my stalker, he’s just, um, a . . . friend.” Who might hate me. If I am found strangled, look into his credit card purchases. You’ll find rope. Or lots of floss. “A colleague, actually.”

Darcy and Sabrina exchange a long, dangerous look. Then they jump out of the car with an overeager “Let’s go meet him!” I hurry after them, hoping this is a lucid dream.

Well. Nightmare.

Sawyer is leaning against the porch, arms crossed on his chest, eyes traveling between the three of us as if to soak up the resemblance that always leaves people befuddled, and I have to stop myself from blurting out, They’re my sisters, not my daughters— yes, people do assume. He’s wearing jeans and a dark shirt, and maybe it’s because there are no chessboards, no arbiters, no press in sight, but he almost doesn’t look like himself. He could be an athlete. A college student on a football scholarship. A stern, handsome young man who has not (allegedly) dated a Baudelaire, who has not (confirmedly) called an interviewer a dickhead for implying that his game looked tired.

“Are you Mal’s friend?” Darcy asks him.

He cocks his head. Studies her. Doesn’t smile. “Are you Mal’s friend?”

If the world were fair, Darcy and Sabrina would roast him and heckle him off our property. And yet, they giggle like they usually do in Easton’s presence. What the—

“What’s your name?”

“Nolan.”

“I’m Darcy. Like Mr. Darcy. And this is Sabrina. Like Sabrina Fair. Mal didn’t get a literary name because . . . we’re not sure, but I suspect that our parents took a look at her and decided to temper their expectations. She said you work together?”

He nods. “We do.”

“At the senior center?”

Nolan hesitates, puzzled. Looks at me for the first time. Finds me on the verge of a panic attack. Then says, “Where else?”

“Do you ever feed the squirrels?”

“Guys,” I interrupt, “go tell Mom we’re home, okay?”

“But Mal— ”

“Now.”

They drag their feet and slam the screen door, like I’m depriving them of a fantastic afternoon staring at Sawyer. It’s not until they’re out of earshot that I let myself focus on him again.

There is, I believe, a bit of a standoff. Where I look at him, he looks at me, and we’re both fairly still. Assessing. Feeling each other out. In my case, monitoring escape routes. Then he asks:

“Are you going to run away?”

I frown. “What?”

“You usually run away from me. Are you going to?”

He’s right. He’s also rude. “You usually lose your king to me. Are you going to?”

I was aiming for a sharp, jugular- cutting jab. But Sawyer does something I did not expect: he smiles.

Why is he smiling?

“Where did you get my address?”

“It wasn’t difficult.”

“Yeah, that’s not a real answer.”

“No. It isn’t.” He turns around, taking in my yard: the rusty trampoline I can’t be bothered to throw away, the apricot tree too dumb to yield fruit, the minivan I patch up once a month. I feel vaguely embarrassed, and hate myself for it.

“Could I have a real answer, then?”

“I’m good with computers,” he says cryptically.

“Did you hack Homeland Security?”

His eyebrow lifts. “You think Homeland Security stores home addresses?”

I don’t know. “Is there a reason you’re here?”

“Do you really work at a senior center?” He faces me again. “On top of chess?”

I sigh. “Not that it’s any of your business, but no.”

“Lying to your sisters, huh?”

“It’s not a good idea, mentioning chess around my family.” And I’m telling him this . . . why?

“I see.” He leans his forearm against the rail, drumming his fingers unhurriedly. “You know, I played against your father once.”

I freeze. Force myself to relax. “I hope you won.” I hope you humiliated him. I hope he cried. I hope it hurt him. I miss him.

“I did.” He hesitates. “I’m sorry that he— ”

“Mallory?” Mom leans out from the doorframe. While we’re talking about Dad. Shit, shit— “Who’s your friend?”

“This is . . .” I close my eyes. She probably didn’t hear. It’s fine. “This is my colleague Nolan. We work together, and we . . . made plans to go get a bite, but I forgot about it, so he’ll just . . . he’ll leave now.”

Nolan smiles at her, looking not at all like the sullen manchild I know him to be. “Nice to meet you, Mrs. Greenleaf.”

“Oh, that’s too bad. Nolan, would you like to stay for dinner? We have plenty of food.”

I know what Nolan sees: Mom’s in her late forties, but looks older than that. Tired. Fragile. And I know what Mom sees: a young man who’s taller than tall and handsome to go with that. Polite, too. He showed up to visit the daughter who dates a lot but never brings anyone home. Ripe for misunderstanding, this situation. It needs to end ASAP.

That’s what I’m thinking when I open my mouth to tell Mom that Nolan really can’t stay. What I’m thinking when Nolan is just a fraction of a second quicker and says, “Thank you, Mrs. Greenleaf. I would love to.”

HE SITS WHERE DAD USED TO.

Which doesn’t mean much, since our dinner table is round. And it makes sense: he’s left- handed, so am I. We should cluster— avoid elbowing the righties. Still, there’s something beyond weird in Nolan Sawyer taking jaw- unhinging bites of Mom’s meat loaf, wolfing down a portion, two, helping himself to more green beans, nodding gravely when Darcy asks, enthralled by his appetite, “Do you happen to have a tapeworm?” He obviously enjoys Mom’s cooking. He made a deep, guttural sound after the first bite, something that reminded me of . . .

I flushed. No one else paid attention.

“Have you been working at the senior center long, Nolan?” Mom asks.

I stiffen, spearing a single green bean. I press my knee against Nolan’s under the table, to signal him to be quiet. “We don’t have to talk about— ”

“A while,” he says smoothly.

“Do you like it?”

“It has its ups and downs. I used to love it, but a little . . . sameness set in, and I actually thought about quitting. Then Mallory arrived.” His knee suddenly pushes back against mine. “Now I love it again.”

Mom cocks her head. “You two must work very closely together.”

“Not nearly as much as I’d like.”

Oh my God. Oh. My. God.

“How’s Mallory at work?” Darcy asks. “Do the old people like her?”

“She has a reputation for pocketing puddings.” Everyone stares at me like I’m that Pharma bro who hiked basic meds’ prices. “And for public near- nudity.”

Mom’s eyes widen. “Mallory, this is concerning— ”

“He’s kidding.” I kick Nolan’s calf, hard. He doesn’t seem to care, but he does trap my foot between his own. “He’s known for his terrible sense of humor.” My leg is now twined with his. Cool. Cool.

“Okay.” Sabrina sets her glass down. “I’ll go ahead and ask it, since we all want to know: Are you guys having sex?”

“Oh my God.” I cover my eyes. “Oh my God.”

“Sabrina,” Mom chides, “that is really inappropriate.” She turns to me. “But yes, are you?”

“Oh my God,” I moan.

“We aren’t,” Nolan says between bites of meat loaf. Third helping.

Oh.

My.

God.

“Maybe you’ll have sex tonight?” Darcy asks. “Is that why you came over?”

My twelve- year- old sister, who sleeps with a stuffed fox, just asked the world’s number one chess player if he came over to bang me. And he just replies, matter-of-fact, “It seems unlikely. And no, it’s not why I came.”

“Did you know Mal has sex with boys and girls?” Darcy adds. “I’m not outing her— she told me I could tell anyone.”

Nolan glances at me. Lightning- quick. “I did not.”

“He doesn’t care, Darcy. And FYI, that didn’t mean ‘please go tell everyone.’ ”

“Would you like more meat loaf, Nolan?” Mom interjects, and leaves for the kitchen when Nolan nods gratefully.

“So, Nolan,” Sabrina continues, “do you also have sex with boys and girls?”

“Jesus.” An image of the entire Baudelaire family flashes in my head. “Okay, I’m going to nuke this conversation and remind you that you cannot ask people you barely know about their sexual orientation during dinner. Or at all.”

“Maybe he doesn’t mind,” Sabrina says. “Do you mind, Nolan?”

“I don’t,” he says, remarkably unperturbed.

Sabrina shoots me a triumphant smile. Sistercide. Sistercide is the only option. I’ll make Darcy help me hide the body. Or Mom. Or Goliath. “So, boys and girls?”

Nolan shakes his head. “Nope.”

“Mostly girls?”

“No.”

“Mostly boys?”

“No.”

Sabrina looks briefly confused, then delighted. “You don’t want to exclude nonbinary people!”

“So,” Darcy interjects, “when are you guys going to have sex?”

Nolan’s “Hard to tell” overlaps with my “Never!” and completely swallows it.

I face- palm.

“I bet Mallory’s really good at it. She sure practices a lot.”

Nolan gives me a long, assessing look that’s mercifully interrupted by Mom arriving with more meat loaf. “Do you have any siblings, Nolan?” she asks. I’ve never been more grateful for a change of topic.

“Two half brothers. On my father’s side.”

“How old are they?”

He squints, as if trying to remember a remote piece of information. “Somewhere in their early teens. Maybe younger.”

“You’re not sure?”

He shrugs. “I never see them.”

Mom’s brow furrows. “You must spend most holidays with your mother.”

He lets out a hushed laugh. Or maybe it’s a scoff. “I haven’t seen either of my parents in years. Usually a friend invites me over.”

“Why don’t you see your parents?” Darcy asks.

“A . . . difference of opinions. Over my career.”

“They don’t like the senior center?”

Nolan bites back a smile and nods solemnly.

“That’s kinda sad,” Darcy says. “I see my family every day of every week of every year.”

“That’s also kinda sad,” Sabrina mumbles. “Wouldn’t mind some space.”

Darcy shrugs. “I like it, that we’re always together. And we tell each other everything.”

The pointed look Nolan gives me makes me want to kick him in the gonads, but my leg is still stuck between his, so I consider drowning myself in the gravy. A slow, nutritious, tasty death.

I’m not sure how it happens, or what atrocious deeds I committed in past lives to deserve this indignity, but after dinner Nolan gets talked into staying “just a little bit longer! Pleeeeease!” and watching TV with my sisters.

“Do you like Riverdale?” Sabrina asks eagerly. She and Darcy flank him on the couch, and Goliath is in his lap. (“What a strangely familiar beast,” Nolan said when she deposited him in his hands. “I wonder if I’ve recently seen a portrait of him.” I nearly forked him in the eye.) Mom leans against the doorframe, taking in the scene with a level of enjoyment that I vastly resent. I’ve been sent to fetch ice cream sandwiches, then sent back when I brought the chocolate kind instead of strawberry.

“I’ve never seen Riverdale.”

“Oh my God. Okay, so, that’s Archie and he’s, like, the main character, but everyone likes Jughead better because hello, Cole Sprouse, and there’s this murder that . . .”

“He’s cute,” Mom whispers while I’m loading the dishwasher.

“Cole Sprouse?”

“Nolan.”

I huff. It doesn’t come out as indignant as I’d like. “No, he’s not.”

“And he seems to have great taste.”

“Because he ate a stomach-pumping amount of your meat loaf?”

“Mostly that. Only secondarily because he doesn’t seem to be able to look away from my most oblivious daughter.”

I’m 93 percent sure that he’s about to place a napalm bomb in our basement, I don’t tell her. Or maybe he wants to rob us. He’ll abscond with the family nickel jar the second we’re distracted. And with what’s left of the meat loaf.

I still have no idea why he’s here. He’s asking my sisters “Which one of the characters is Riverdale?” with his soothing NPR voice, making them giggle and slap his forearms, and I want him gone from my house. Stat.

And yet it’s over one hour before Mom reminds Darcy that she needs to finish her English homework, and Sabrina locks herself in her room to video- chat with derby friends about how Emmalee should be jammer and what’s wrong with Coach these days, anyway?

“I’m going to bed,” Mom says, a tad too pointedly. I look outside the window: the sun’s not done setting.

“Nolan’s leaving, too.”

“He doesn’t have to.” She gives him a brilliant smile and walks away, leaning on her cane.

“Yes, he does,” I yell after her.

Eavesdropping is not something I’d put past my family, so when Nolan follows me outside, I walk all the way to the apricot tree. This time of the year, it’s little more than a handful of leaves on scrawny branches— as any other time.

Hands on my hips, I turn around to face him. At dusk he’s even more imposing than usual, the angles and curves of his face clashing dramatically against each other.

Honestly, it doesn’t make sense. I shouldn’t find him this handsome, because he simply isn’t. His nose is too large. His jaw too defined. Lips too full, eyes set too deep, those cheekbones too . . . too something. I shouldn’t even be thinking about this.

“Now that you’ve eaten approximately twelve pigs with my mom’s meat loaf as a vehicle, do you mind telling me why you’re here?”

“Pretty sure it was ground beef.” He reaches for one of the tallest branches. Easily. “Does your family think we’re dating?” He doesn’t look upset. More in the ballpark of proud.

“Who knows.” Probably. “Is it a problem?”

I want him to say yes, and then throw in his face that it’s his fault for showing up unannounced. He thwarts my move. “Who doesn’t love a good fake dating scheme.”

I arch my eyebrow. “I’m surprised you’re familiar with the concept.”

“A friend is a huge Lara Jean fan. I sat through, like, six of her movies.”

He means his girlfriend. “There are only three.”

“Felt like more.”

He’s so assured. So effortlessly at ease. You’d expect a known sore loser with temper problems who spends 90 percent of his time studying opposite- colored bishop end games not to excel in social situations. And yet.

I think about the mountains of self-confidence he must have within himself. Wherever they might come from. Look at him, the voice in my head supplies. You know where they’re from.

Oh, shut up.

“Why are you here, Nolan?”

He lets go of the branch. Watches it bounce a few times, then settle against the darkening sky. When he reaches out for me, I’m ready to roundhouse kick him in the chin, but he pushes a loose strand of hair away from my face. I’m still dizzy from the brief contact when he says, “I want to play chess.”

“You couldn’t find someone in New York? You had to drive all the way to New Jersey?” I’m assuming he owns the Lucid Air parked in front of the Abebes’ place. Because of course he’d own my dream car.

“I don’t think you understand.” He holds my eyes. I think his throat moves. “I want to play chess with you, Mallory.”

Oh.

Oh? “Why?”

“It should have been you, yesterday. It was . . . I had you there. In front of me, across the board.” His lips press together. “It should have been you.”

“Yeah, well.” It would have been fun if it had been me. A knot of regret squeezes inside me, and I have the sneaking suspicion that it has nothing to do with the prize money, and everything to do with the fact that my match against this guy— this sullen, handsome, odd guy— was the most fun chess I’ve ever played. “Malte Koch had other ideas.”

“Koch is a nonentity.”

“He’s the second- best player in the world.”

“He has the second- highest rating in the world,” he corrects me.

I remember the way Nolan humiliated him yesterday, and say, “Have you considered that Koch might be less of an allaround jerk to all of us if you spent a couple of minutes per week pretending to indulge his delusions of archrivalry?”

“No.”

“Right.” I start to turn around. “Well, this was fun, but— ”

His hand wraps around my forearm. “I want to play.”

“Well, I don’t play.”

His eyebrow lifts. “Could have fooled me.”

I flush. “I don’t play unless I’m at work.”

“You don’t play unless you’re at Zugzwang?” He’s clearly skeptical. And still holding my wrist.

“Or at a tournament. Never in my free time. I try not to think of chess at all in my free time, actually, and you’re kind of making it impossible, so— ”

He scoffs. “You think about chess all the time, Mallory, and we both know it.”

I would laugh him off, but I’ve been going over Koch’s games all day in my head, and the jab hits close. I pull free, ignoring the lingering warmth of his skin, and square my shoulders. “Maybe you do. Maybe you are thoroughly addicted. Maybe you wrap chess sets in plastic bags and hide them in your toilet tank because you have nothing else to think about.” I remember the Baudelaire rumor, and it hits me that out of the two of us, the one without a life is certainly not Nolan. Still, I’ve come too far to stop. “But some of us see chess as a game, and enjoy work- life balance.”

He leans in. His face is just a few inches from mine.

“I want to play chess with you,” he repeats. His voice is lower. Closer. Deeper. “Please, Mallory.”

There’s an openness to him. A vulnerability. He suddenly looks younger than I know him to be, a boy asking someone to do something very, very important for him. It’s hard to say no.

But not impossible.

“I’m sorry, Nolan. I’m not going to play against you unless it happens in a tournament.”

“No.” He shakes his head. “I can’t wait that long.”

“Excuse me?”

“You barely have a rating. You’re not going to be allowed into invitationals or super- tournaments for years, the next open isn’t until late spring— ”

“That’s not true,” I protest, even though I have no idea. His stubborn, displeased, near-worried expression lets me know that it likely is.

Something twists in my stomach.

“Why?” he asks. “Why this bullshit no-play- outside- work rule?”

“I don’t owe you an explanation.” Then why are you giving him one? “But . . . I don’t like chess. Not like you do. It’s just a job, something I fell into backward, and . . .” I shrug. It feels tense, unnatural. “It’s just the way I want it.”

He studies me, silent. Then: “Is this because your father— ”

“No.” I close my eyes. There’s a loud roar in my ears, drums pounding at my temples. Slow, deep breaths make it recede. A little. “No.” I hold his gaze. “And please, don’t ever bring up my dad again.”

He briefly looks like he won’t let it go. Then nods. “I’ll give you the money.”

“What?”

“I’ll give you the tournament prize. The one you should have been competing for.”

“Are you for real?”

“Yes.”

“If I beat you, you’ll give me fifty thousand dollars.”

“I’ll give it to you even if I win.”

I laugh. “Bullshit.”

“I’m not lying. Fifty thousand dollars is nothing for me.”

“Yeah, well.” Having him say so in front of my lower- middleclass house- and- apricot- tree combo stings. “Screw you.”

I walk away again, and this time he doesn’t grab my wrist. He doesn’t need to: with two steps he’s in front of me, between me and the house. The sun has set again, and the garden is pitch black. “I meant that I’m good for the money. I’ll pay you to play with me.”

“Why? Is it because you can’t stand to have someone best you? Are you like Koch, unable to accept that you once lost to a woman?”

“What?” He looks genuinely appalled. “No. I am nothing like him.”

“Then why?”

“Because,” he near- growls. “Because I— because you— ” He stops abruptly and takes a few steps away. He makes a frustrated, abortive gesture with his arm, something I recognize from his rare losses at chess.

I guess I won, then.

“Listen, Nolan. I’m sorry. I . . . I’m not going to play with you.” I expect the disappointed expression on his face. The mirror feeling in my chest, not so much. “It’s not personal. But I promised myself that I’d keep chess at a distance.”

I turn without saying goodbye and walk back inside the house, hating myself all the way to my room for the odd feeling of loss in the pit of my stomach.

I’m stupid. He just hates the idea that we played once and he lost. I’m not special. This is not about me— it’s about him. His status. His insecurities. His need to dominate.

I let myself into my room. My head throbs, and I cannot wait to go to bed. I cannot wait for this day to be over.

“Did Nolan leave?”

Darcy’s voice startles me. I’d forgotten she’d be in here, doing homework at her desk.

“Yes. He had to go home.”

“Well, that’s understandable.”

I nod, looking for my pajamas.

“He must be very busy. He’s the number one chess player in the world, after all.”