Check & Mate by Ali Hazelwood

Maybe it’s that I want it too much, I think. And then I hear myself say it aloud as my toes push up, and I’m doing that odd thing again— that light peck on his lips that makes me feel like I’m thirteen and sneaking behind the gym. But this time I don’t have to slap myself for being a total weirdo, because Nolan kisses me back.

He’s not good at it. Not immediately. Not bad, but there is an airy moment of hesitance, of suspended disconnect, when I think the kiss just won’t work out. Not meant to be. Two ships passing in the night, going their separate ways, a narrow miss.

But then he does something. Tilts his head, maybe. Adjusts his grip. Presses more firmly against me, and it all changes. His ship crashes into mine and my back is flat against the wall, and oh, he wants it. He wants it very, very much. He wants it as much as I do. I can tell from his leg sliding between mine and pinning me to the wall, from the way his hand shifts to my hip, assertive like on a chessboard. From the guttural sound in the back of his throat.

He is good at it. Warm and forceful and thorough, and he tastes good and—

A door opens somewhere in the house. Laughter. Footsteps. The hallway light turns on. I push on Nolan’s shoulders, and we break apart just in time.

“Oh, you guys are back.” Emil. Standing in the entrance, quickly tying his robe closed. “What are you doing?”

I glance at Nolan, thinking that Emil’s his friend. The burden of coming up with a plausible excuse should fall on him. Problem is, Nolan is staring at me, pupils wide, lips full and . . . kissed?

“Um, we were just . . .” I clear my throat. Smile tentatively at Emil. “Talking about that Koch game that— ”

“Say no more, Greenleaf.” He shuffles to the fridge. “I cannot get sidetracked or Tanu will murder me. She sent me to forage.” He piles leftover pizza and three cupcakes in his arms, then disappears with a swish of his robe and a careless “Goodnight.”

I’m alone with Nolan again.

Nolan, who hasn’t stopped staring.

“It’s getting late,” I say, not meeting his eyes. I feel flustered. Because of a kiss. I am regressing to thirteen. “I’m tired. I . . .”

He nods and does something weird: holds his hand out to me. Calmly. Quietly. As though he expects me to take it. And it’s exactly what I do: I slide my fingers in to his, and when he leads me down the hallway, stopping to turn off the light, I follow him meekly. We walk past Tanu’s door without reacting to the muffled laughter from inside, past Emil’s empty one, past all the others, too— including mine, until we’re in his room, which smells like clean skin and mind- bendingly good chess and his couch back in the city.

He nonchalantly takes off his jeans, all long, muscled limbs.

“What are you doing?” I blurt out. He doesn’t look at me, just smells his shirt, deciding that it belongs in a laundry hamper.

“Getting ready for bed.”

“I . . .” What is happening? Why did I follow you? What. Is. Happening? “Why aren’t you nervous?”

“About what?”

“About”— I gesture inchoately between us— “all of this.”

He glances at me. “I don’t know. It feels right. Besides, I don’t get nervous much.”

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 swallow. “I don’t understand.”

He comes closer. In two steps he’s in front of me, and for some indecipherable reason I’m shaking. A small-scale earthquake’s happening inside me, twenty kings are being tipped over, and Nolan just cups my face again.

“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.”

Oh God. Oh God, God, God. I’m shaking harder.

“I . . . Are we . . . Are we going to fuck?”

I’m purposely trying to rattle him. And it’s not working.

“No. We’re going to sleep.”

We lie down, and somehow it’s a smooth thing. I’m wearing leggings and a soft shirt and no jewelry, and that’s why I’m so comfortable. Not because my head is pillowed on his chest and his legs are tangled with mine, and I feel his slow, steady heart like a warm clock under my ear.

“I haven’t even washed my face,” I tell him. I’m still trembling, albeit more quietly. I’m a mess.

“That’s okay. Antonov won Coimbra 2019.”

I laugh shakily. “I . . . don’t think I can sleep.”

“Want a bedtime story?” His hand combs gently through the hair at my nape. “It’s called ‘Polgar Versus Anand, 1999.’ It starts with e4. c5.”

I groan. But I’m smiling when I ask, “And then?”