Check & Mate

by Ali Hazelwood

“Do you like it?” “It has its ups and downs. I used to love it, but a little…sameness set in, and I actually thought about quitting. Then Mallory arrived.” His knee suddenly pushes back against mine. “Now I love it again.” Mom cocks her head. “You two must work very closely together.” “Not nearly as much as I’d like.”

“He’s cute,” Mom whispers while I’m loading the dishwasher. “Cole Sprouse?” “Nolan.” I huff. It doesn’t come out as indignant as I’d like. “No, he’s not.” “And he seems to have great taste.” “Because he ate a stomach-pumping amount of your meat loaf?” “Mostly that. Only secondarily because he doesn’t seem to be able to look away from my most oblivious daughter.”

“I want to play chess.” “You couldn’t find someone in New York? You had to drive all the way to New Jersey?” I’m assuming he owns the Lucid Air parked in front of the Abebes’ place. Because of course he’d own my dream car. “I don’t think you understand.” He holds my eyes. I think his throat moves. “I want to play chess with you, Mallory.” Oh. Oh? “Why?” “It should have been you, yesterday. It was…I had you there. In front of me, across the board.” His lips press together. “It should have been you.”

“I want to play chess with you,” he repeats. His voice is lower. Closer. Deeper. “Please, Mallory.”

“Also, there’s tons of fanfiction on AO3, mostly of him making out with some Emil Kareem guy, but—”

Even she was weirded tf out

“I do get several angsty late-night phone calls asking why Tanu just liked the shirtless picture of some Stanford swimmer on Instagram, or who’s the skank who keeps dueting Emil on TikTok.” “I bet you’re great at talking people off the ledge.” “I’d be better at it if I knew what the hell a TikTok duet is.”

went to bed early, and then spent hours listening to the soft, intimate tones of the others chatting, feeling vaguely jealous. I texted Easton (How’s life? Are you puking your heart out in a toilet bowl?) and scrolled through her TikTok waiting for a reply that never came. She’s busy. It’s fine.

“I don’t want to play against you.” “A problem, since I really want to play against you.” I shiver, because it feels like he’s saying something else. Like… I don’t know. “You already have.” “Once.” “Once was enough.” “Once was nothing. I need more.” “I’m sure there are plenty of people who’d love to play. Who’d probably pay just to sit across from you.” “But I want you, Mallory.”

I'm getting such kulti vibes from him

I click on the link, which brings me to Page Fucking Six. It’s a photo of Nolan and me on our last night in Toronto, playing tic-tac-toe in a semi-dark room. My head is bent, pencil in hand. He’s staring at me, an oddly soft expression on his usually unreadable face.

which is that Koch told Vanity Fair that you and I are dating, and Page Six published pics of us in Toronto, and now whatever small nerdy percentage of the world cares about chess thinks that we have a thing.” “And we don’t?” I turn to glare at him. “You don’t have things. You told me so.” “I also said ‘until recently.’ ”

“I usually have dinner standing up in front of that chessboard over there.” “I’m surprised you have dinner at all. And don’t just sustain yourself on the tears of your rivals.” He smiles again, and God. He is offensively, uniquely, devastatingly handsome.

“Hey, Greenleaf.” Kawamura. “Are you on Discord?” “Discord?” “The messaging app. We have a server with most of the top-twenty players. We talk chess, gossip about FIDE, the usual. I’d love to send you an invite.”

YA books are scary because why are we mentioning Discord 😭

“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?” “Hmm?” “Why did you come to Vegas?” His fingers tighten around mine. My heart cartwheels. “Mallory. I came because you did.”

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 grown-ups work,” Emil said one night, after it became clear that no one could keep up with us. But there’s something else, too. I pad barefoot across the hardwood floor first thing in the morning, knowing I’ll find him in the breakfast nook, ready to tell him about whatever revelation I had during my sleep; 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.

“Chess is a bad idea.” “Why?” “Look where it got me.” “It got you here. To me.”

Nolan stares like I’m the center of gravity of the room, like nothing else ever existed but me in all of space and time. It makes my heart beat in my throat, it makes me want to kiss him again, it makes me want to run the hell away. “Sorry, I—” “Touch-take rule,” he murmurs. He stands, too. Every step back I take is one forward for him. “I— What?” “You touched me. Can’t stop now. Touch-take rule.”

“Can I kiss you?” “But our game—” “I resign. You win. Can I kiss you?”

Darcy once told me about a study they did, monitoring the heart rate of top chess players during important games. Nolan’s was always the slowest. The steadiest. Is that why he’s standing in front of me in boxer briefs and a Coimbra Chess 2019 T-shirt and I’m shaking like a leaf? “Do you not want this?” he asks. “No. I mean, yes. I mean, I don’t not want this. But…we just kissed out of the blue, and you seem so okay with it, and…” He shrugs. “It’s not out of the blue for me.” “It isn’t?” “I came to terms with this months ago, Mallory. The first time we played, maybe.”

“I’ve got you, Mallory. Nothing bad is going to happen. You can let yourself want this, because you already have it. You have me.”

“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.

“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.”

“What do you mean, Koch cheated? There were too many cameras for him to—”

I FUCKING KNEW IT

you’re going to have to look into yourself, and be honest about what you want. And yes, I know that’s terrifying. But life is too long to be afraid.” I snort wetly. “Too short, you mean.” “No. Years spent carrying grudges, talking yourself out of things that might make you happy? They go slowly.”

“Mal, this room is a vibe,” a voice tells me from the bed. “You’re really coming up in life, bitch. And all because I pushed you to embrace the important cause of gluten sensitivity.” I close my eyes. Take a deep breath. Open them again. And whimper, more than ask: “Easton?”

i’m sorry but if my friend just ignored me for 2 months and then only showed up the day before i play the World Championship i’d be so annoyed

“It’s okay, I’ve ordered new ones. The point is, I was too busy to realize that you were just trying to anticipate my move with that chess brain of yours.” She pauses. I watch her slip her shoes off with her toes. “I think that when I left, you were scared that I’d get over you. So you decided to get over me sooner.” “I didn’t—” “Maybe not consciously, but—” “I mean, I didn’t decide it,” I say, voice thick. My last vestige of irritation is washed away by something dangerously close to tears. “I just thought that you…”

how has the narrative suddenly flipped that mal was the one to disconnect the friendship? did i hallucinate all the times she texted easton and she didn’t reply which is why mal stopped texting her?

but I have to wonder if maybe we were at the same tournament or at the same club, just in different divisions. I have to wonder if maybe we played on the same chess sets, one after the other. I have to wonder if we were meant to be, and only missed each other narrowly. Because when I stopped playing, I was done. Done. Years passed, and it should have been it for you and me, we should have been that narrow miss and nothing more. But Defne’s tournament happened, and it was…a second chance.” I take a deep, shuddering breath. “I don’t think I believe in destiny. I believe in solid openings, and middle games that show initiative, and swift transitions to end games. But I can’t stop wondering if maybe the universe was trying to tell us something,

“I want to be with you,” I push out. Shaky. And then, when nothing explodes at the revelation, I repeat it more firmly. “I want to be with you. As much as I can. As much as you’ll have me.”