Check & Mate

I wonder if the waitress at the IHOP finds it weird that we’re showing up twelve hours later than our usual time. She deposits our coffee mugs on the table, and doesn’t bat an eye at how obviously shell- shocked we all are, or the tight way I’m sandwiched between Defne and Tanu in the booth. Then she disappears into the bowels of the kitchen, never to be seen again.

We should tip her a thousand percent.

“Impossible.” Across from me, Emil shakes his head. His board is out, arranged on the final position of my match. Very tactful, Emil. What a triumph of empathy you are. Consider a career in counseling, Tanu told him when he started setting it up, but I shook my head and she fell silent. The image is scorched in my brain anyway.

“It was the perfect move.” Emil’s voice is half reverential, two- thirds horrified. “It tied up your pieces. It had staggering long- range implications. It pinned your active and inactive pieces. It’s . . . I’ve never seen anything like this. Definitely not from Koch.”

I hate his name. I hate how it reminds me of his soulless grin when I resigned, of his gloating during the endless mandatory press conference, of the disappointed expression on the faces of the other candidates, the women in the audience, even some of the reporters. I knew you’d show your belly, he whispered in my ear. Tell Sawyer he’s next.

“You didn’t do anything wrong,” Defne tells me. “You didn’t make any mistakes. Not until . . . You played beautifully, Mal.”

“Does it matter, though?” I ask. Not bitter. Just curious.

She sighs. Not really is the clear answer. “The second- place prize is still fifty thousand. And it’s yours.”

I nod. Earning money for my family was always the goal. Financial security was the destination— chess, just the means to get there, like an old, beat-up car I wanted nothing to do with but had to ride on my yellow- bricked quest. In the last half an hour I’ve made enough to solve all our financial problems and then some. I should be celebrating, not sitting in an IHOP, trying not to burst into tears over my stupid hunk of junk croaking.

And yet.

I feel like I’m falling. Like I’ll never meet the ground again.

“If it makes you feel better, the entire VIP lounge gasped when you resigned.” Tanu sounds concerned. I should reassure her that I’m fine, but I can’t tear my eyes from the black queen. “No one expected this from Koch. I swear, they all . . .” She trails off. A tall shade appears on the board, and someone slides into the booth, next to Emil.

I glance up and let out a shaky laugh. Nolan is wearing his usual jeans-and-shirt combo. His hair is starting to grow long, and like every time I see him after a while apart, I’m surprised by how much room he takes up— at the table and in my head.

“You asshole,” I say without heat.

He lifts one eyebrow. “Uncalled-for.”

“Finally revealing yourself.”

“You knew I was here.”

Until ten minutes ago I’d have denied it, but yes. And I liked the idea, though I’m not going to admit it to him or to myself. There’s been enough soul-searching for today. Time to engage in some soul ditching.

“We didn’t tell her,” Tanu hurries to say.

“She knew anyway.” Nolan doesn’t look at her. He doesn’t look at anyone but me, and I feel blood in my cheeks.

“I did. It was that fishy smell.”

He laughs, low and deep, and after a second I’m laughing, too, and the others look at us like we’re bananas. Which we might be.

“Thoughts on Koch?” Defne asks him when we’re done. She, too, seems unsurprised by his presence.

“I hope he sits on his balls,” he says. “Aside from that, none.”

“Really? No thoughts about this man you flew cross- country to creep at?”

“Not why I came to Vegas.” He shrugs. “Koch’s the human equivalent of a dirty toilet brush, and hasn’t changed in the ten years I’ve known him. Would you like more hot takes?”

Part of me is surprised to hear Nolan and Defne bicker like they’ve been acquainted their entire life. But it doesn’t get to ask follow-up questions because of the other part of me, which is too busy wallowing.

“But what did you think of the game?” Defne insists, and something shifts in Nolan’s eyes, something that might be disappointment, displeasure, disenchantment. The feeling of falling morphs into an uglier, colder one.

“That I’d like to talk about with Mallory alone. Could we have some privacy?”

Defne snorts. “I’m not leaving you alone with her.”

“Why?”

“Because.”

“Not an answer.”

“She’s my responsibility.”

“She can speak for herself. And you realize we’ve been alone together before, right? On multiple occasions.”

“Not like that,” I hasten to say. “Not alone like that.” Everyone is giving me weird looks, and I don’t know why I’m blushing. Nolan should be the flustered one. That’s his job.

Defne looks at me. “Do you want to talk to Nolan, Mal? Just the two of you?”

No. Yes. No. “Yes.”

“I’ll walk her back to the hotel,” he says. “No need to stick around.”

It takes some shuffling, but we end up alone at the booth— us, Emil’s board, and six different flavors of waffle syrup. I look at the black queen again and wait for him to speak.

Maybe he’ll say that he was wrong about me, that I was never incredible, that he won’t be texting me advice anymore. I’m tempted to justify myself, to apologize, to say that I did my best, and if it’s not enough, well. This might not be the first time that I’m not enough, but it hurts just like all the others.

But he says nothing. His hand travels across the table, and I think he’ll cover the back of mine with his palm. Instead, he twines our fingers together.

A simple, loose touch. Barely a touch, really, but it warms me and grounds me, just enough to look up at him when he says, “Be my second.”

“I . . . what?”

“Be my second.”

“Nolan.” I shake my head, confused. “You have a million seconds, you can’t want me to— ”

“I have five. And I want you.”

My temples throb. “Why?”

“The World Championship is in February. I need to train to defeat Koch. I need you.”

“No.” Koch is not Nolan’s rival, he’s his enemy. I let down both of us by losing. “You don’t need me. You probably don’t even need to prep against Koch. I just lost to him, so I’m the last person you should— ”

“I didn’t see it, either.”

My breath catches.

“The queen. I watched the game, and I was as defenseless as you, Mallory. I . . .” He swallows. “I didn’t see it coming, and then I didn’t see a way out of it. I would have resigned, too.”

I exhale. “How is it possible? You beat him a few months ago.”

“I don’t know. It’s not unheard-of for players to improve years into their training and make big jumps. But this . . . this was a chess- engine- level move. Perfectly designed to disrupt every single action, every single initiative you had going on— and you were playing some fucking great chess. It was something a computer would come up with.” Nolan is distressed. I always thought of him as a hothead, but it’s the first time since we met that he seems genuinely upset about something. Genuinely insecure. “Mallory, if that’s the level he plays at, he’s going to win the World Championship.”

His fingers are still solid, still warm against mine.

“But I didn’t make it, either.”

“I know. But let’s figure it out together.” He leans forward, eyes burning into mine. “Be my second. Help me take that piece of shit down.”

“I . . . if I become your second, won’t I be training with you all the time? I’ll know everything. I’ll be so familiar with your style, you’ll have a hard time taking me by surprise again. If I become your second, I’ll know you.”

There is a beautiful, indecipherable half smile on his lips. “You think I don’t want you to know me?”

“Nolan . . .”

I overturn our hands and look down at his palm. It’s so much larger than mine. The lines and grooves, so deep. So easy to trace with my fingertips, to follow to the source.

I . . . I just don’t know. If it’s a bad idea. If I’m good enough. What this is, this luminous, tethering thing that always seems to pull me closer to Nolan. I don’t know if I can stand to be near him, and I don’t know if I can stand not to be.

I don’t know anything, but there’s something I need to ask.

“Nolan?”

“Hmm?”

“Why did you come to Vegas?”

His fingers tighten around mine. My heart cartwheels.

“Mallory. I came because you did.”