“I’m going to bed,” Mom says, a tad too pointedly. I look outside the window: the sun’s not done setting.
“Nolan’s leaving, too.”
“He doesn’t have to.” She gives him a brilliant smile and walks away, leaning on her cane.
“Yes, he does,” I yell after her.
Eavesdropping is not something I’d put past my family, so when Nolan follows me outside, I walk all the way to the apricot tree. This time of the year, it’s little more than a handful of leaves on scrawny branches— as any other time.
Hands on my hips, I turn around to face him. At dusk he’s even more imposing than usual, the angles and curves of his face clashing dramatically against each other.
Honestly, it doesn’t make sense. I shouldn’t find him this handsome, because he simply isn’t. His nose is too large. His jaw too defined. Lips too full, eyes set too deep, those cheekbones too . . . too something. I shouldn’t even be thinking about this.
“Now that you’ve eaten approximately twelve pigs with my mom’s meat loaf as a vehicle, do you mind telling me why you’re here?”
“Pretty sure it was ground beef.” He reaches for one of the tallest branches. Easily. “Does your family think we’re dating?” He doesn’t look upset. More in the ballpark of proud.
“Who knows.” Probably. “Is it a problem?”
I want him to say yes, and then throw in his face that it’s his fault for showing up unannounced. He thwarts my move. “Who doesn’t love a good fake dating scheme.”
I arch my eyebrow. “I’m surprised you’re familiar with the concept.”
“A friend is a huge Lara Jean fan. I sat through, like, six of her movies.”
He means his girlfriend. “There are only three.”
“Felt like more.”
He’s so assured. So effortlessly at ease. You’d expect a known sore loser with temper problems who spends 90 percent of his time studying opposite-colored bishop end games not to excel in social situations. And yet.
I think about the mountains of self-confidence he must have within himself. Wherever they might come from. Look at him, the voice in my head supplies. You know where they’re from.
Oh, shut up.
“Why are you here, Nolan?”
He lets go of the branch. Watches it bounce a few times, then settle against the darkening sky. When he reaches out for me, I’m ready to roundhouse kick him in the chin, but he pushes a loose strand of hair away from my face. I’m still dizzy from the brief contact when he says, “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.”
“Yeah, well.” It would have been fun if it had been me. A knot of regret squeezes inside me, and I have the sneaking suspicion that it has nothing to do with the prize money, and everything to do with the fact that my match against this guy— this sullen, handsome, odd guy— was the most fun chess I’ve ever played. “Malte Koch had other ideas.”
“Koch is a nonentity.”
“He’s the second-best player in the world.”
“He has the second-highest rating in the world,” he corrects me.
I remember the way Nolan humiliated him yesterday, and say, “Have you considered that Koch might be less of an allaround jerk to all of us if you spent a couple of minutes per week pretending to indulge his delusions of archrivalry?”
“No.”
“Right.” I start to turn around. “Well, this was fun, but— ”
His hand wraps around my forearm. “I want to play.”
“Well, I don’t play.”
His eyebrow lifts. “Could have fooled me.”
I flush. “I don’t play unless I’m at work.”
“You don’t play unless you’re at Zugzwang?” He’s clearly skeptical. And still holding my wrist.
“Or at a tournament. Never in my free time. I try not to think of chess at all in my free time, actually, and you’re kind of making it impossible, so— ”
He scoffs. “You think about chess all the time, Mallory, and we both know it.”
I would laugh him off, but I’ve been going over Koch’s games all day in my head, and the jab hits close. I pull free, ignoring the lingering warmth of his skin, and square my shoulders. “Maybe you do. Maybe you are thoroughly addicted. Maybe you wrap chess sets in plastic bags and hide them in your toilet tank because you have nothing else to think about.” I remember the Baudelaire rumor, and it hits me that out of the two of us, the one without a life is certainly not Nolan. Still, I’ve come too far to stop. “But some of us see chess as a game, and enjoy work-life balance.”
He leans in. His face is just a few inches from mine.
“I want to play chess with you,” he repeats. His voice is lower. Closer. Deeper. “Please, Mallory.”
There’s an openness to him. A vulnerability. He suddenly looks younger than I know him to be, a boy asking someone to do something very, very important for him. It’s hard to say no.
But not impossible.
“I’m sorry, Nolan. I’m not going to play against you unless it happens in a tournament.”
“No.” He shakes his head. “I can’t wait that long.”
“Excuse me?”
“You barely have a rating. You’re not going to be allowed into invitationals or super-tournaments for years, the next open isn’t until late spring— ”
“That’s not true,” I protest, even though I have no idea. His stubborn, displeased, near-worried expression lets me know that it likely is.
Something twists in my stomach.
“Why?” he asks. “Why this bullshit no-play- outside-work rule?”
“I don’t owe you an explanation.” Then why are you giving him one? “But . . . I don’t like chess. Not like you do. It’s just a job, something I fell into backward, and . . .” I shrug. It feels tense, unnatural. “It’s just the way I want it.”
He studies me, silent. Then: “Is this because your father— ”
“No.” I close my eyes. There’s a loud roar in my ears, drums pounding at my temples. Slow, deep breaths make it recede. A little. “No.” I hold his gaze. “And please, don’t ever bring up my dad again.”
He briefly looks like he won’t let it go. Then nods. “I’ll give you the money.”
“What?”
“I’ll give you the tournament prize. The one you should have been competing for.”
“Are you for real?”
“Yes.”
“If I beat you, you’ll give me fifty thousand dollars.”