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“Well, last time I left, you seemed pretty upset, so— ”
“We’re fine. You can put your power trip away. No one needs to ‘man the fort.’ Mom, Darcy, and I arepeopleand can take care of ourselves. We’re not pets you need to feed and walk.” She steps past me, T-shirt in hand. A surge of irritation courses through me— seriously?Seriously?Do Ideservethis?— and I slap the doorframe. It only gets me a splinter stuck in my palm.
When we leave, they wave at us from the porch. “Come back soon, Nolan,” Darcy yells.
“And don’t feel like you need to bring Mallory with you,” Sabrina adds archly.
“What’s up with that?” Nolan asks once we’re on the road.
“You mean, with the way my sister would love to drown me in a barrel of mead?”
His mouth twitches. “I did sense some animosity.”
“I’m not sure.” I sigh. “I’m doing my best with her. I make sure she has everything she needs and nothing to worry about.”
“Maybe that’s the problem.”
“What do you mean?”
“When you’re with your sisters, you act like they’re your responsibility. Like you’re their parent, almost. It works with Darcy, but Sabrina might find it infantilizing.” He shrugs. “Maybe she just wants you to be her sister.”
“What doyoueven know about sisters?”
“Nothing. What doyouknow about defensiveness?”
I cannot help laughing, and then we fall quiet for a while. Nolandrives like he plays, steady and focused, and for once I don’t feel antsy for not being at the wheel. I let my eyes wander over the halo of the streetlights, the snow weighing down the pine trees, his firm hand as he shifts gears, like he’s moving a bishop across the board.
He’s thinking about chess. He’s thinking about the Koch game we analyzed this morning, the one with the Queen’s Gambit that he lost to Davies three years ago. I know it. Not surehowI know what’s in Nolan’s head, or when it started, but here I am. Knowing.
“Knight e5 was a stupid move,” I say.
He doesn’t skip a beat. “Koch’s attacks backfire a lot. Well.” He shrugs. “Backfired. Before he ate spinach and got an upgrade.”
“It might be a good strategy, luring him into becoming aggressive.”
“Yeah.”
I think wistfully about the tactics I’d use against Nolan if I were the challenger. He’s such an unpredictable player, always thinking of long- term advantages, of seemingly silent moves to exploit later, unexpectedly. I’ve heard commentators say that our styles are similar, but I think we’re oceans apart. I like to strangle my opponent, wear them down slowly, drain them of active play and attack possibilities one by one, until it’s just us— me and their king.
But Nolan would know how to deal with me. What to be on the lookout for. To beat him, I’d have to learn to let go of minute positional advantages and take more overt risks, earlier on. I watch him stretch his neck, strong muscles tensing under his skin, and think that maybe it would work, seducing him into a blunder. Maybe it wouldn’t, but it would keep him on his toes. He’d give me one of those long, knowing looks. Smile, even. He’d smile at me, and I’d get to smile back as I took his king.
It sounds like a dream. A thing imagined.
“Darcy pulled me into your room,” he says, “and conspiratorially whispered that she’s ‘in the know.’ ”
“Unlike Mom and Sabrina, she googles. Probably hangs out on the dark web. Signs up Goliath for Piggie- Tinder.”
“She asked me to teach her to play chess.”
“Darcy?” I perk up. “For real?”
“She said it’s . . . hot shit girl?”
I laugh. “Hot girl shit. You should really try to be online a little.” Most of the other top- ten players have Twitch and You-Tube channels. Nolan: Twitter and Instagram— both withNOT DIRECTLY MANAGED BY NOLAN SAWYERwritten in all caps in the bio. I bet his social media guy got sick of people DMing him nudes. “Why are you not online, anyway?”
“I’m online way too much.”
“What do you mean?”
