Strip chess.
“Drinking age’s nineteen, Mal,” Tanu says when I decline a fruity drink for the second time. She lost a bishop and her socks about ten minutes ago. “It’s legal! Like en passant capture! Or queening! Or castling sho— Crap, I’m so sorry!” She spills her glass onto the Italian guy Nolan defeated yesterday and promptly moves to paint whiskers on a cute Japanese guy, forgetting all about eighteen-year- old me.
I go back to focusing on my rapid game against a Sri Lankan girl I bonded with after noticing her Dragon Age Solas pin. She’s very pretty, and a great player to boot, and a-couple-of-monthsago- Mallory would be making a move on her. I swore to Saturn and back that I wouldn’t play for fun. Yes, it’s exactly what I’m doing. Nope, I would not like to talk about it.
“—that time Nolan stole a black knight from Kaporani’s board at GE’s tournament and all matches were delayed by twenty minutes because of the search?”
“That was after Gibraltar, when Kaporani switched my water with distilled vinegar.”
“We’d already gotten revenge for that with the glitter bomb. He sparkled for months.”
People laugh. Emil and Nolan are on the couch, playing tactical team, surrounded by a mix of old friends and fans. There’s a girl, for instance, who’s almost as blond as me, curled up next to Nolan. Hard to tell how he feels about it, since he’s so focused on his game. He must have run a hand through his hair, because it’s vaguely mussed, unbearably attractive.
Something else I’d rather not talk about.
“Must be cool to play with him,” the Sri Lankan girl says, following my gaze.
I look away. “He can be kind of a dick,” I say, though he hasn’t really been one to me.
She chuckles, low and smoky. She’s really my type. “All geniuses are. I heard he has an IQ of 190. Maybe higher, but tests cannot measure it.”
“He doesn’t eat meat loaf like someone with a 190 IQ,” I mutter, resentful.
“Sorry?”
“Nothing. Um, checkmate, by the way.” I stand, wiping my palms over my leggings and abandoning my half-hearted seduction plans. My heart’s not really in it, or maybe I’m too tired to get laid. “It was great to meet you. I’ve got an early morning and— ”
“Where are you going, Mal?” Tanu appears out of nowhere. “It’s like, not even midnight!”
“Oh, you don’t have to keep it down for me. I just need to buy presents for my sisters tomorrow morning, so— ”
“But don’t go now! Don’t you want pizza?”
“Pizza?”
“Yes, let’s go get pizza!”
“I’m kind of tired, and— ”
“Then we’re getting it and bringing it back!” She turns around and bellows drunkenly, “Who wants to come get midnight pizza?”
Might be because Tanu is the life of the party, or because pizza is hands down the best food in the world, but in half a minute the music is turned off and our shared area empties out of everyone but me.
Maybe I’m eighty years old inside, but: Blessed. Quiet.
“You’re not coming?” the blond woman who was with Nolan earlier asks from the door. Her accent is very pretty. But we’ve never really talked, so I’m confused why she’d want to know whether I—
“No.”
I startle and turn around. Nolan— she was talking to Nolan. Who’s still on the couch.
“You sure?”
He barely spares her a glance. “Very.” He probably hates pizza. Only eats authentic Sicilian calzone made with tomatoes grown around the mouth of Mount Etna.
Whatever. I’m going to bed. “Nolan, when Tanu comes back, will you tell her that I went to sleep?” I wave past the chairs, the chess sets, the couch. “Have a good— ”
His hand snatches my wrist. I’m too surprised to wiggle out. “Let’s play a bit, Mallory.”
I freeze. I stiffen. And this time I do wiggle out. “I told you, I don’t— ”
“— play outside of training and tournaments. Yes. But you’ve been playing all night, outside of training and tournaments. With five different people.”
I scoff. “Did you count?”
“Yes.” He looks up at me. Stars dance occasionally across the line of his jaw, his cheekbones. “I was sure you’d end the night in Bandara’s room.”
“Bandara?”
“Ruhi Bandara. You two were just playing.”
I take a step back and refuse to admit that I entertained the same thought. Instead I say, “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 swallow heavily, then look away. He’s right— I already broke all my no-chess-outside-work rules. So why am I resisting this so hard?
Maybe it’s because I’ve seen him play. I’ve seen him be brilliant, read positions with a glance, do things I can’t even understand. If we played, I’d lose. And yes, I hate losing, but this is hardly a fair match. So the number one player in the world is better than this year’s reluctant Zugzwang fellow. Big deal. As newsworthy as being slower than Michael Phelps in the 200m butterfly.
Maybe something else bothers me, then. Not that I’ll lose, but that he’ll know that I lost.
Yes. This . . . interest, obsession, fascination he seems to have with me came because I beat him. Once. I’m innately good at chess, but I’m not better than someone who’s just as innately good and has had decades of professional training. We’d play, he’d win, and then I’d be just like everyone else: someone Nolan Sawyer defeated.
His captivation with me would instantly wane, and—
That would be a good thing, wouldn’t it? I don’t like Nolan Sawyer showing up to my house and talking Riverdale with my sisters, do I? I should agree to play, and end whatever this is.
And yet.
“No,” I hear myself say.
His jaw works. “Right, then.” He relaxes and reaches across the glass bottles, chess pieces, half-eaten bags of chips, grabbing a pencil and a German Chess Federation flier. “Sit down.”
“I told you, I— ”
“Please,” he says, and something in his tone stops me. I try to remember the last time I heard him say it. A simple word, please. Isn’t it?
“Fine.” I sit— across from him, as distant as possible. This is what I get for refusing pizza. “But I’m not going to play, so— ”
“Chess.”
“What?”
“You said you wouldn’t play chess. You didn’t mention anything else, so . . .” He turns the flier to me. He has drawn a three-by-three grid, put an X through a space, and . . .
I laugh. “Tic-tac- toe? Really?”
“Unless you have Uno handy? Checkers? Operation?”
“This is worse than Candy Crush.”
He smiles. Lopsided. “Don’t tell Tanu or she’ll put another pushpin under my pillow.”
“Another?” I shake my head, amused. “You can’t really want to play tic-tac- toe.”