Check & Mate

By 3:00 p.m. on the following day, Nolan has spoken fewer than fifteen words to me.

Why knight a5?

Could sacrifice the queen.

And my personal favorite: Getting a muffin— want one?

Maybe I hallucinated the previous night. Maybe our kiss was a dream. Maybe the way I woke up in his empty room, a mug of hot coffee on the bedside table— maybe I need a checkup to—

“What do you think, Mal?” Tanu asks. From her tone, not for the first time.

“About what?”

“This position. What would you do?” I glance at the board. We’re analyzing a Koch game from last year. Well, they are analyzing. I’m ruminating.

“It’s weak. The left side could be exploited.”

“Yeah, that’s what Nolan said, too.”

I look up at him, and instantly flush. Because that’s apparently what I do now— stress over whether some dude I didn’t even sleep with isn’t interested in me anymore because I’m a total mess, because I toss and turn at night, because my morning breath smells like the dumpster behind a fish restaurant.

This is uncharted territory. An entire new galaxy. I’m used to caring about what Mom, Darcy, Sabrina, Easton think of me. I have room for no one else, and—

“Would you agree, Greenleaf?” Emil asks.

Shit. “Sorry, with what?”

“With what Nolan said.”

Nolan’s eyes are unreadable. “He castled too late,” he repeats.

I glance at the board. “Or he shouldn’t have castled at all,” I say, pretending I’m not flustered.

“Koch’s so uneven.” Emil rubs his temples. “How can one go from disastrous blunders to near- genius moves like the one against Greenleaf? He’s like two completely different players.”

“And which one will he be in Italy?” Tanu asks.

No one answers. Nolan stares in the mid- distance, and I stare at him like a twerp.

We analyze Koch’s end games until late. By the time Nolan and Emil stand to make dinner, the sun has been down for hours. “You’re staying till the end of January, right?” Tanu asks me, voice low. The others are arguing over whether one should throw the pasta into the water before it boils. (Nolan: “Who cares? It’ll be faster.” Emil: “You are— and I cannot stress this enough— a tasteless peasant.”)

“That’s the plan. You aren’t?”

“Only until the semester starts.”

“Oh.” I think of Nolan and me alone in this house. “Oh.”

“Defne will come up and help, of course,” she continues.

I frown. Defne approved of me becoming Nolan’s second because she said that it would be great training for me, but . . . “I didn’t think they were that close.”

“Oh, they’re super close. They both trained with Nolan’s grandfather before . . . well. But Nolan still needs you. He doesn’t show it, but Koch’s unpredictability rattled him. He needs someone he cares about who also cares about him. Like you do, you know?”

Oh God. “Tanu, Nolan and I . . .” I shake my head and shift closer, perched on the edge of my chair. “I guess we are close in some ways, but we’re not . . . together.”

“Oh, I know relationships are weird.” Her smile is reassuring. “I mean, Emil and I technically aren’t together, either, because . . . well. Not that he deserves me, but mostly, the distance sucks. But Nolan is so into you.”

“It’s . . .” I shake my head. “It’s complicated.”

She laughs, a mix of confusion and amusement. “Well— I don’t know what’s going on, but I’ve never seen him as calm and happy as when you stick around, so— ”

“Hey, do you guys want to play two versus two?” Emil interrupts me. “There’re four of us, so two teams.”

I quickly consider the possible permutations. I’d be either against Nolan, or—

“I’ll team with Mallory,” he calls from the kitchen.

Tanu lifts her eyebrow at me, and I close my eyes. They’re still closed a few seconds later when Nolan returns from the kitchen and, instead of taking a free seat, lifts one leg and slides between me and the back of my chair.

I nearly gasp. He takes up a lot of room, always, and this isn’t going to work. I’m going to fall over.

Or I’ll be fine, here in his lap. The hand that’s not busy adjusting the black pieces to the center of their squares casually rests against my abdomen, spanning its width. It’s the same hand as last night— confident, soothing. This feels nice. Smells even better. Tanu’s eyebrow lifts a millimeter higher, and Emil moves his pawn to d4, unbothered by me sitting between his closest friend’s thighs.

“Want to go first?” Nolan murmurs, lips to the shell of my ear.

I shiver. Then I nod, and my hair brushes against his chin. My skin heats, and I’m too flustered to think, so I do the first thing that comes to mind.

Knight to f6.

I remember how much Nolan hates the Grünfeld only after he groans and sinks his teeth into my earlobe.

WE PLAY FIVE GAMES. NOLAN AND I WIN ALL EXCEPT FOR ONE, and that’s my blunder’s fault. The hanging queen.

“That was . . . a move,” Tanu says, advancing her knight, and Nolan makes a choked noise in the back of his throat and hides his face in the curve of my neck, as though unable to witness the mess I made. I want to hiss that if he weren’t tucking me into himself with a hand on my belly, maybe my brain wouldn’t be a slushie. But his breath tickles my nape, and while everyone thinks hard about the next move and the room is silent, I can feel his heartbeat warm against my back.

It’s the closest I’ve ever been to someone without sex.

The closest I’ve been to someone with sex.

And the most distracted I’ve ever felt in a chess game, in life, and the worst part is, I don’t believe Nolan’s toying with me. Sometimes his chin rests on my shoulder, boyish, artless, and I know that he’s just doing what feels good. It just happens to distract me.

He’s the first to say, “I’m going to bed,” when Tanu offers to put on a movie. He loads the dishwasher, heads to his room with an absentminded wave, and I am left there, stuck between his absence and Emil’s scathing takedown of Aronofsky’s filmography. I’m a balloon, blown larger and tighter and fuller by the second, ready to explode.

So I bolt. I leave the Aronofsky convo behind and march down the hallway. I don’t bother knocking— just open the door and let myself in Nolan’s room. Not my best idea, since he just took off his shirt and is wearing only his jeans.

I lean back against the door. Shit. What am I doing?

“That hung queen,” he says with a small smile, like me barging in is as natural as sundown. He’s fit and well muscled. I wonder when he finds time to work out, to look like that. “Though I’m sure Tanu and Emil appreciated the win— ”

“Can you please explain?”

“Explain?”

“Last night”— I gesture confusedly— “and then this morning, and then today, tonight, just now.”

He tilts his head. “Yes. That is how time works.”

“No, I— ” I squeeze my eyes shut. “I hate this.”

“Hate what?”

“That I’m here asking you . . . that you’re in my head, and I— ” I run a hand down my face. “No. Listen . . . I don’t care. I’m not supposed to care about whether you . . . I’m not supposed to be thinking about you at all— I have a family to take care of. Shit to get done. But you kiss me, then ignore me like nothing happened— ”

“Right.” He crosses his arms. “That’s your move, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“You’re the one who ignores people. Leave them behind before they leave you, right? Spare yourself the mortifying ordeal of being known.”

“That’s unfair.” I push away from the door. Begin pacing inside the room. “It’s different. I don’t usually— I have responsibilities. I don’t have time to moon, Nolan. I cannot be distracted by people who don’t need me, but then you— you— ”

My eyes catch on something on his desk, buried under a pile of chess books that’s not unlike something Dad would set aside to make room for me on the couch.

It’s the German Chess flier. From Toronto. From the night we . . .

“The tic- tac- toe sheet.”

“What?” He comes to stand behind me. “Oh, yeah.”

It’s on his nightstand, preserved like a trophy. He brought it from Toronto, to Moscow, to his apartment in New York, to here. Warmth spreads in my stomach.

I resist it. Bite the inside of my cheek. Then give in, and ask. “Why did you keep it?”

“It made me think of you.”

His arms close around my rib cage, right below my breasts, and I close my eyes. “Why would you keep something that makes you think of me?”

I feel him shrug. “Because I think of you anyway, Mallory.”

I turn around. Break contact. This is unbearable. This closeness with him. These tugs toward him, deep in my stomach. It’s what I’ve been avoiding— something that I know can only end in lies and betrayal. I’ve seen it happen before.

“What do you want from me, Nolan, and— will you please stop smiling.”

“I’m not.” He grins wider.

“I’m serious, if you don’t quit smiling.”

“That’s not a threat. It’s not even a grammatically correct sentence.”

“What do you want from me? What are we . . .” I bury my face in my hands. This is too raw. Too untraveled. Too risky and confusing. “I don’t understand why you’re in my head.”

“You’re in mine, too. But I know why.”

I groan and make myself look at him. He’s not smiling anymore. “Just . . . what do you want from me?”

“I want everything.” His tone is calm. Matter-of-fact. Naked, in a way that has nothing to do with his clothes. “I’m all in.” He slowly lowers his forehead until it touches mine. His eyes merge together into one, right on his nose. All I can hear is the sound of our breathing, and something inside me clicks into place. “What about you, Mallory?”

I don’t answer. Instead I do what I know: I push my chin up to kiss him, and it works just as well.

It’s even better than yesterday. His arms cage me against the dresser, and mine loop around his neck. I’m wearing a T-shirt, and my hands make contact with the vast expanse of his back, smooth and sunshine- hot. I open my mouth, and he licks my lower lip before his tongue slides against mine, clumsy and hot and insistent and delicious. The helpless, eager, guttural noises we’re both making are maybe embarrassing, but it’s okay.

Even if I never catch my breath again.

“Slow down,” I tell him. “Let’s just . . .”

“I think about this every second of every day.” His palm slides up my back, and my body is like a pawn in his hands. He turns us around and then we’re on the unmade bed, the twisted sheets digging into my spine. “You’ll be playing the most beautiful chess I’ve ever seen, and I dream about having you under me. It’s fucking confusing.”

We’re both wearing too many clothes, and suddenly I’m impatient. I want bare. I want skin— more skin. I want him closer, in a seamless, sticky way. He’s hard against my stomach, and the two of us feel both familiar and soul- baringly intimate, like nothing has been before.

“Do you . . .” My hand slides down his abs, meets the waistband of his jeans, and it’s finally there, a hint of that hesitation, that wobbliness I expected from him. “No?” I ask.

His throat bobs as he swallows. His full lips tremble for the barest second. “Are you real?” The air between us swells, overflows. “Sometimes I’m scared that I imagined you. Sometimes I think you’re only in my head.”

“I’m here,” I breathe out. I’m a pool of liquid heat.

“I have no idea what I’m doing,” he says, biting softly the hollow under my ear.

I shiver. “I can help,” I tell him, even if my neurons are boiling to mush.

“Yeah?”

“It’s kind of like chess. I do one thing . . .” I undo the first button of his jeans, slowly. Feel, more than hear, the hitch of his breath. “And you do another.”

He holds himself up on his arms and looks down at me, like he’s inventorying, deciding where to start. His index finger hooks on the hem of my shirt and drags it upward, stopping right below my bra. He stares at my navel for what feels like minutes, then says, “I want odds. Since it’s my first time.”

“You want a handicap?”

“I want two moves.”

I laugh. And then sober when he pins my hands above my head, in a way that suggests that he might not know what he’s doing but he has plans, fantasies, strategies, a rich interior world that will be put to use, and . . .

“I hope,” I say, serious, “that you’re going to like this as much as chess.”

“I think,” he tells me with a small smile, “that I already do.”