Check & Mate

by Ali Hazelwood

I’m going to do this. I can do this. I am going to the World Championship. I’ll play against . . . Nolan. It’s incandescent, the blend of joy and excitement that seizes me. Something utterly new and reckless finally allowed through the floodgates.

As impossible as it sounds, I haven’t let myself think about it, or dream of it. I haven’t admitted it to myself before now, how much I want to sit across from Nolan, a chessboard between us. How much I want to look him in the eye as he does the astounding, magical things only he is capable of.

I want to be his adversary. I want to tear his strategy apart, I want to field his attacks and terrorize him with my own, I want to chip at every little tactical choice, till he looks at me a...

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

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.

“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.

“Really? No thoughts about this man you flew cross- country to creep at?” “Not why I came to Vegas.” He shrugs.

Nolan should be the flustered one. That’s his job.

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.”

“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 wa...

“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 ...

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 cart...

“— if you go rook g5— ” “— then the bishop— ” “— but that pawn— ” “— in g7— ” “— no, if you want to keep your king safe— ” “— there’s this thing called castling that— ” “Um . . . hey, guys?” Nolan and I turn to Tanu with two aggressive, annoyed, simultaneous, “What?”

I sit on the kitchen counter and observe Nolan as he eats standing up, businesslike, brisk, as though shoveling coal into a furnace, mind clearly still on the game we were analyzing. It’s awe inspiring, his discipline.

He wakes up earlier, falls asleep later, works harder than anyone I’ve ever seen. The rigors he puts himself through, the single- minded, indefatigable stubbornness as he stares at the engines, dissecting, retracing, combining, projecting. He’s tireless, unshakable. Driven in an indomitable, near- obsessive way. This iron- hard tenacity of his is an oddly attractive quality. Not that he needs more of those.

but his time with the others seems almost like an afterthought. Brief interludes in the sea of his days, which are spent with me.

It’s because there are things they don’t see. Combinations and tactics that elude them and seem to click only in my and Nolan’s heads.

“Let’s just go watch Doom Patrol while the grownups work,” Emil said one night, after it became clear tha...

his eyes scan every room he enters, quiet only when they settle on me, and sometimes I have the urge to lean forward to flatten the curls growing on the nape of his neck.

We still don’t play against each other. We study, analyze, dissect, reenact other people’s chess, but we never play a match that’s ours. And yet . . . Something is happening, but I don’t know what. This thing between us is layered, complicated, fractured unlike anything I’ve experienced before. It lacks the coziness of a friendship, the ease of a hookup, the distance of everything else.

Maybe Nolan should just be some guy: not a rival, not a friend, not more than a friend, just some guy who plays good chess. Some guy who’s in my h...

Whenever Mom needs me—which, with the new meds we’ve been able to afford, is not a lot. She thinks I’m making good money and sparing myself the commute by taking night shifts at the senior center, and . . . well. The money part, at least, is true. Nolan pays his seconds well.