Check & Mate

We wake up early in the morning. Do a bunch of slow, sleepy stuff with our hands that feels really good and also happens not to require a condom. I had only one, left in my backpack from who knows when; Nolan had none. Apparently we really had fooled ourselves into thinking that this wouldn’t happen. I fall asleep on his chest, his arms looped around me, feeling his rapid breathing slow down to something calmer, then slide into sleep and pull me under.

The buzz of Nolan’s phone on the nightstand wakes us up once the sun is high. He answers with a huge yawn. “Yeah?” His voice is too loud. Or maybe not. Maybe it’s the way we’re pretzeled together skin to skin, legs coiled, his free hand tangled in my hair and holding me into the curve of his shoulder. “That’s because I was sleeping. Yup. Yeah. Sure.” He sounds unimpressed. He sounds like the delicious, warm version of Nolan that kept ordering me to stop fidgeting at 3:00 a.m. This is not real life. “Uh-uh.” I pull back to watch his slitted, tired eyes and his swollen lips. He smells fantastic. I want to sink under his skin. I want to move between his legs and dwell on the expanse of his chest. I—

“Sure. She’s here. Let me ask her.”

Nolan presses his phone against his shoulders. My eyes widen. “What?” I whisper. “Don’t tell them I’m here! They’ll think that I . . .”

He gives me a confused look. “That you’re here?”

I groan and hide back in his neck.

“There is a charity event. Someone wants us to play together, against . . .” He picks up his phone again. “Who would we be playing against?” I hear a brisk female voice on the other side. “Some tech industry person,” he tells me, and then into the speaker again, “Is it Bill Gates again? Elle, he’s bad at chess. I can’t make the game last longer than one minute against . . . Yeah. I’ll call you back.” He tosses the phone to the side and pulls me closer, covering our heads with the blankets.

The outside world disappears.

“Who’s Elle?” I ask.

“My manager.” He pushes my hair behind my ear. “What should I tell her?”

“When is this happening?”

“Not until the spring.”

“Why the tech industry?”

“It’s full of people who have a hard-on for chess, apparently.”

It makes a surprising amount of sense. “Why do you have a manager?”

“All pro players do. You’ll need one, too.”

I won’t be a pro, Nolan. You know it. “Would you recommend Elle?”

“Hell no. Save yourself.”

I laugh. “Can I . . . think about it? The charity thing.”

“Sure.”

We fall quiet, cocooned by the soft cotton of sheets, impossibly close. Did last night really happen? I wonder, feeling stuck in a dream. Did it happen to you like it happened to me?

Then he murmurs, “Good morning,” while pressing a kiss on my forehead, and it all starts to seem warm, and precariously good, and true.

NOLAN HAS NO POKER FACE. NO ABILITY TO LIE, OR TRICK, OR hide. No intention to, either.

He tracks my movements with a small smile whenever I step away from the chessboard to grab a glass of water. He kisses me against the fridge while the three GMs are talking about the French Defense five feet from us. He takes my hand and pulls me out for a walk in the snow as the sun is about to set, like healthy habits are something he suddenly cares about.

I wish I could say I minded, but I love every second of it.

There’s a curious, painfully honest confidence about him. Last night was good, really good, but it was also his first time, our first time: messy and imperfect, full of hushed questions and trials and errors. His hands on me were bold, but inexperienced and tentative. Other guys would be drowning in their fragile masculinity today, but Nolan just seems deeply, genuinely happy.

Then again, remembering the sounds I made, the gasps . . . I guess he got glowing feedback.

“Can’t believe he used an Evans Gambit three years ago,” he says about the Koch game we just analyzed. His footprints in the snow are almost twice as large as mine.

“Yeah, well. It was a bad choice, since Thagard- Vork destroyed him.”

“Still. I haven’t seen the Evans since the week I learned how to play.”

I smile. “When was that, by the way?”

“What?” He gives me a curious look.

“When did you learn to play chess?”

“I don’t remember. Pretty sure it’s on Wikipedia.”

“Yeah. But unlike my sister, I refuse to read it. Boundaries and stuff.” I stop him with a tug on his coat. I’m wearing his gloves, because it’s freezing and I forgot to bring mine. They dwarf my hands, and Nolan smiles at the sight. “But I still want to know.”

“I was . . . five? But I didn’t really understand. Not until I was well over six.”

“Your grandfather taught you?”

“Kind of. He was training a lot of people at the time, and I just . . . I wanted to be in the midst of things. He was the coolest person I knew, and I wanted him to pay attention to me.”

“And your parents didn’t want you to?”

He shrugs. “My dad’s an asshole. And even if he weren’t, he just doesn’t have the chess bone. When I was little, I would spend hours thinking about puzzles or Legos or toys, reasoning over them, analyzing, and he couldn’t understand why. He thought there was something wrong with me. Put me in all sorts of sports. And I was good enough at them, because I was tall and quick, but they were never . . .”

“They weren’t chess?”

He nods.

I think about Dad. About how he was the opposite, constantly pushing me toward chess. About how if he were still alive, we’d probably be just as estranged as Nolan and his father are. Vastly different paths, same results. “Do you hate your parents?”

He lets out a small laugh. “I don’t think so. I don’t think about them much. Haven’t for a while.” He swallows. “Somehow, it hurts even worse.”

I reach out, sinking my hand in the pocket of his coat. He exhales, a white chuff in the late afternoon air. “It didn’t matter when my grandfather was around, because he got me. He’d been like me as a kid, or similar enough. When my parents divorced, they stopped feeling like they had to care about me. Mom remarried. Then Dad. Then his new wife got pregnant and it was almost a relief. I was an afterthought, and I could just stay with my grandfather for weeks at a time. It was just me and him. Playing, playing again. Playing some more.”

“Did you ever win?”

“Oh, no. Not for a long time. Not until I was nine or ten. Then I did, and I was almost afraid. He hated losing as much as I do. I thought he’d be mad. But . . .” He shakes his head. “I think it was the happiest I’d ever seen him.”

“So maybe he didn’t hate losing as much as you do.”

“I think . . .” He stops, and so do I. Holds my eyes. “He told me once that sometimes, with some people, it’s not about winning or losing. That with some people, it’s just about playing. Though for the longest time, I didn’t really believe him.”

“Yeah?” I look away, toward the setting sun. “I still think about losing to Koch. Every day. Every hour.”

“I know.”

“Stop reading my mind.” I poke him in the stomach. He snatches my hand and pulls me closer to him. “How do you deal with losses?”

“I don’t.”

“So you just feel like shit? Every time?”

“You basically have to hate losing to be a top player. Pretty sure the genes are on the same chromosome.”

“Is that why you’re a terrible loser?”

“Yup. And why you are one.”

I smile. “Not gonna lie, it’s validating. Growing up, I couldn’t figure out why Easton was so chill about losing all those matches. Meanwhile even draws sent me into a deep funk.”

“Easton?”

“Oh. She’s my best friend.” I swallow. “Well. Former?”

His head cocks. “Did she take your queen?”

“No. She . . . left. For college. Colorado.”

“Ah.”

“Yeah. Haven’t heard from her much ever since.” I sigh. “How do you keep in touch with Tanu and Emil, again?”

“It’s not the same. Emil’s still in New York and hates the dorms, which means that he’s always at my place. And you know how Tanu is. I’d have to work hard on ditching her.”

“Yeah.” I try not to sound too jealous. “Easton finds me boring and uninteresting now that I don’t . . . I don’t even know. Play beer pong with her?”

“She told you that?”

“No. But I know it.”

“Could you be assuming?”

“No.”

He nods, and I like that he’s not trying to lie to me. To convince me that I’m imagining it all. “Have you considered confronting her?”

“No. I . . . I don’t want her pity. I want her to be with me because she wants to.”

“Ah, yes.” He nods knowingly. His chin dips into the raised neck of his coat. “You do like being in charge.”

“What do you mean?”

“You like having the upper hand. Feeling like you’re doing something for others. Like you’re in control.”

“No.” I frown. “That’s not it at all.”

“I think it’s easier for you to be with people when you feel needed than when you need them. Less risky. Less messy, right?”

“But it’s not true. I mean, according to Sabrina my family doesn’t need me for anything but money anymore. And Easton’s the one who went MIA. And you— you most certainly don’t need me— ”

“But I do.”

I snort. “Come on. You have a million seconds, and legions of adoring fans, Tanu and Emil, Elle the scary manager, the press, the entire world— ”

“Mallory.” He stops me. His expression is solemn. “It’s lonely, chess. You may have a team around you, but when it really comes down to it, you’re on your own. You play on your own. You lose and win on your own. You go home, and you’re on your own.” He takes in the disappearing light, his eyes darker than ever. And then looks back to me, presses a pale strand of hair behind my ear, and asks something I didn’t expect. “Will you come to Italy with me?”

“To Italy?”

He nods. “For the World Championship.”

“I . . . Why?”

His throat works. “I had my grandfather with me for the first one, six years ago. But after that, I was always on my own.”

“But Tanu and Emil are going to be there, and— ”

“They are. But . . .” I can see the gears in his head, like he’s trying to articulate a fuzzy, ungraspable feeling. “They’ll be there with each other first.”

Somehow, I know exactly what he means. I feel it, too, I want to say. I feel the same. Like everyone around us is part of the same connective tissue, and you’re just floating about. Unbound.

My heart beats faster, because this feels like a threshold. A touch- take decision that I won’t ever be able to undo. If I say yes, then Nolan and I will be something different. Something together. More than the sum of our parts.

Then, no. No should be the only possible answer. I have no business promising to be there for anyone. I have priorities. Duties. But.

“Do you want me to be there?” I ask.

He nods instantly.

I take his cold palm, lift it in both my hands, and press a soft kiss in the middle, where the fate line slashes between the head and the heart.

“I’ll be there, then.” I smile up at him, right as the last of the sunlight fades into the snow. “For you.”

IT OCCURS TO ME THAT NIGHT, AFTER WE CHECK SOME OF Koch’s recent Challengers games against engines and instead of staying up late to pore over the results we decide to go to bed at eight, that maybe the timing for this thing is a little off.

We should be training hard. We should focus on strategy, tactics, preparation.

We should not be staring at each other across the table.

We should not drift off during Tanu’s passionate speech on why Velveeta is legally not cheese to exchange faint, unprompted, unjustified smiles.

We should not needlessly brush knuckles as he hands me his plate for the dishwasher.

And most definitely, we should not fall on each other the second we’re in his room, the wood of his door smooth under my back, his front pressed against mine as we kiss deeply. The mechanics of this are familiar, but the impatience simmering inside me is new. The feeling that one more minute apart will be too much. Seeing the same eagerness mirrored in Nolan.

“We still don’t have a condom,” I tell him, and he grunts against my throat. Then steps an inch back.

“I’m going to get one from Emil— ”

“No. No.”

“Why?”

“I’d rather they not know.”

“Mallory.” He presses a kiss on my cheekbone. My nose. “They know.”

“Yeah, but they don’t know know, and . . .” I’m the one to groan now. “Let’s just go to CVS tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” He pulls back and looks so horrifically, theatrically appalled, I have to laugh and kiss the expression off his face.

“We can do other things in the meantime.”

His fingers slide down my spine, slowly massaging each knob. “Like what? Shovel snow? Color by the number?”

I laugh against his mouth. “So many options.”

“Please, list them for me. I am very new at this.” His hand slips inside the waist of my jeans, and I exhale sharply.

“Illegal move.”

“Should we call in the arbiter?”

“Only if— ” My phone rings, and he groans. I whimper, working my hand between us to retrieve it from my pocket.

“It’s Defne,” I say. I have a déjà vu— months ago, on Nolan’s couch. She has atrocious, cockblocking timing.

“Ignore her,” he orders, and I’m happy to. I toss it on Nolan’s dresser, and we’re back on each other, graceless, uncoordinated, voracious, until he kneels in front of me and starts unbuttoning my pants. “So.” He speaks against my hip bone. “These things we are going to do. Could they involve me— ”

My phone, again. No, Nolan’s— it’s his phone buzzing now. “Fuck,” he grunts, pulling it out of his pocket and throwing it next to mine.

But my eyes fall on the caller ID, and I stiffen. “Wait. It’s Defne.”

She hasn’t called once since we came here, just the occasional text. And now . . .

We halt.

Nolan’s phone stops buzzing. A second later mine starts ringing again.

We exchange a long look, both out of breath. He lets out a deep, frustrated groan, and hides his face in my stomach. His hands close around my waist, trembling slightly. I take it as tacit permission to pick up.

“Hey, D— ” He inches my shirt up and nibbles on my belly button. My breath hitches. I giggle, sigh, try to push him away. Then the cycle starts all over. “Hey, Defne,” I finally manage. Nolan licks a stripe below my navel. “How are you— ”

“Mallory, I’m on my way to pick you up. You need to return to New York immediately.”