Check & Mate

by Ali Hazelwood

But it’s just some dude. A boy, even? He looks out of place in the red velvet chair, with his dark shirt, dark slacks, dark hair, dark expression.

Meet the Kingkiller: The No. 1 chess player in the world. “Let me tell you something, Nolan: smart is the new sexy.”

He leans forward, obviously charmed by this young man who’s built like an athlete, thinks like a theoretical physicist, and has the net worth of a Silicon Valley entrepreneur.

An unusual, handsome prodigy who won’t admit to being special.

I wonder if Jim- Jimmy- James has heard what I’ve heard. The gossip. The whispered stories. The dark rumors...

“And you just turned eighteen. When, again?” “Three days ago.” Three days ago, I turned sixteen.

Ten years and three days ago, I received my first chess set— plastic pieces, pink and purple— and cried with joy. I’d use it all day long, carry it everywhere with me, then snuggle it in my sleep. Now I can’t even remember the feel of a pawn in my hand.

I stop thinking about Sawyer, or about the way his voice sounded when he said that he never wanted anything as much as chess. And I don’t think of him again for a little over two years. That is, until the day we play for the first time. And I wipe the floor with him.

“I’m short a player. For a team tournament.” “I don’t play anymore.”

You really enjoy playing this crap? she asked me when we got paired for a match. You don’t? I asked back, appalled. Of course not. I just need a wide range of extracurriculars. College scholarships don’t win themselves. I checkmated her in four and have adored her ever since. Funny, that Easton never cared for chess like I did but stuck with it much longer.

“We all know you’re unable to say no,” Easton points out. “So just say yes.”

“You were number one in our class. You’re a math whiz and can memorize anything. You had three scholarship offers— one to come to Boulder, with me. But you’ve decided not to go, and now you seem stuck here, with no end in sight and . . . you know what? It’s your choice, and I respect you for it, but at least you could let yourself do one fun thing. One thing that you enjoy.”

“Listen, I don’t want to force you to do anything. But chess used to be your entire life. And now you don’t even want to play it for a good cause.”

but it won’t be the same, because she’ll have met new friends, seen new things, made new memories.

BRET EASTON ELLIS: Mal, they’re TERRIFYING. MALLORY:

Something weird happened last year: almost overnight, my two sweet little dumplings, who used to be the best of friends, became rival swamp hags.

Oh, yeah: the only time these ingrates manage to get along? When they’re ganging up against me.

Never negotiate with those hormonal, anarchic, bloodthirsty sharks. God, I love them so much I could cry.

Mom likes to joke that my sisters and I, with our white- blond hair, dark blue eyes, and rosy oval faces, are slightly smaller versions of each other.

She gives me a skeptical, distrustful look. Like I’ve broken her heart one too many times with my paltry auto- mechanic’s salary.

Her eyes narrow. “You don’t have the money, do you?” My heart skips a beat. “Of course I do.”

The idea of Sabrina worrying about money is physically painful.

After several trials and many errors, I finally discovered the best way to get Mom off my back: to imply that I want to go to college so little that every time she brings up the topic, I’m tragically wounded by her lack of respect for my life choices. It might not be the truth, and I’m not a fan of lying to her, but it’s for her own good. I don’t want anyone in my family to think that they owe me anything, or to feel guilty about my decisions. They shouldn’t feel guilty, because none of this is their fault. It’s exclusively mine.

Sabrina looks at you when she needs money.

But at least I’m here. At least I can make things easier for her.

I am the only one who didn’t get the business casual memo. Oops.

I’ve met him once at Oscar’s place and I’m not a fan, for reasons that include his penchant for derailing conversations with unrelated mentions of his FIDE rating (2,546), his ability to carry out hour- long monologues on his FIDE rating (2,546), and his lack of understanding that I’m not interested in going out with him, no matter his FIDE rating (2,546).

The moment breaks, my heart slows, and I’m just a girl—perhaps a slightly fawn-kneed one. It’s just a room that I’m standing in. The chess pieces— they’re just stuff. Things. Some white, some black. Some can move in any number of unoccupied squares, others not so much. Who cares?

Did you see him lose to Sawyer at Ubud International two weeks ago? It was embarrassing.” “Everyone’s embarrassing against Sawyer,” Josh points out. “Well, plenty of people are embarrassing against me.” Easton’s eye twitches. “Are you comparing yourself to Sawyer?” “People say we have similar playing styles . . .” I cough to hide a snort.

“Wouldn’t want to make Lal wait for the thorough asskicking he’s about to get, right, Zach?” I can’t tell whether Zach recognizes the shade. He puffs up and struts to his board, and I’m left wondering how soon the black hole of antimatter that is his ego will swallow the solar system.

It won’t be hard, getting checkmated like a total loser, not with how rusty I am.

The table shifts as my opponent takes a seat. A large hand stretches into my line of sight. And just as I’m about to force myself out of my reverie to shake it, I hear a deep voice say, “Marshall Chess Club Player One. Nolan Sawyer.”

He’s not looking at me. He’s holding out his hand, but his eyes are on the board, and for a split second I can’t figure out what is happening, where I am, or what I came here to do. I can’t figure out what my name is. No. Wait. I do know that.

His shake is brief, warm, and very, very firm.

“Nice to meet you,” I lie. He lies right back at me with a “Likewise,” and still doesn’t look up.

Just sets his elbows on the table, keeping his gaze fixed on the pieces, as though my person, my face, my identity, are utterly irrelevant. As though I am but an extension of the white side of the board.

It cannot be. This guy cannot be Nolan Sawyer. Or, not the Nolan Sawyer. The famous one. The sex symbol— whatever that even means. The guy who a couple of years ...

I have no clue what Nolan Sawyer’s up to now, but he can’t be sitting across from me. The people on our left and right seem to be not-so-subtly eyeing him, and I want to yell at them that this is just a doppelgänger. Ple...

I am playing chess and I know what I’m doing. After each move I punch Sawyer’s clock and glance up at him, curious, though he never does the same.

He’s always unreadable. Opaque. I have no doubt that he’s taking the game seriously, but he’s distant, as though playing from far away, locked in a cell on the top level of one of his rooks.

His movements, when he touches the pieces, are precise, economical, strong. I hate myself for noticing that. He’s taller than the men sitting at his sides, and I hate myself for noticing that, too. His shoulders and biceps fill his black shirt just right, and when he rolls back his sleeves, I notice his forearms and am suddenly grateful that we’re playing chess and not arm- wrestling; I hate myself for that the most.

It’s not that it’s the wrong move. Not at all. It is, in fact, a flawless move. I can see what he’s planning to do with it— move it again, open me up, force me to castle. Check in four, or five. Knife to my throat, and I’d be toast. But. But, I think it’s possible that elsewhere on the board . . . If I forced him into . . . And he didn’t retreat his . . .

My heart flutters. And I don’t defend. Instead I advance my own knight, a little light- headed, and for the first time in— oh my God, have we been at this for fifty- five minutes? How is that possible?

Why does chess always feel...

For the very first time since we started, when I look up at Sawyer, I notice a trace of something. In the shifting line of his shoulders, the way he presses his fingers against his full lips, there’s a hint that maybe he really is ...

It takes Sawyer a couple of seconds to realize what has happened. A few beats to map all the possible scenarios in his head, all the possible roads this game could take. I know it, because I see him lift his hand to move his own queen, as though it could possibly make a difference, as though he could wiggle his way out of my attack. And I know it, because I have to clear my throat before I say, “I . . . Checkmate.”

That’s when he lifts his eyes to mine for the first time. They are dark, and clear, and serious. And they remind me of a few important, long- forgotten things.

And each time, he was welcomed back to the chess community with open arms, because here’s the deal: for over a decade Nolan Sawyer has been rewriting chess history, redefining standards, bringing attention to the sport.

And if the best sometimes acts like a douchebag . . . well. It’s all forgiven. But not forgotten. Everyone in the community knows that Nolan Sawyer is a terrible, moody, ill- tempered ball of toxic masculinity. That he’s the poorest loser in the history of chess. In the history of any sport. In the history of history.

Which, because he just lost against me, is possibly going to dev...