Chapter 27
Chapter 27
“If Svensson draws white and he plays the Scotch Game—and Martina is wrong about him going Ruy Lopez. It’ll totally be the Scotch Game—how will you counter?” Kit demanded.
This was how they’d spent more or less every minute of every day since Scarlett had gotten back to New York from filming Queen’s Kiss : analyzing games, playing against each other, and walking around the city speculating about endgames and countermoves.
Most people (a.k.a. Alma) thought that chess was a “sport” for nerds who sometimes sprained their wrists playing blitz chess too vigorously and managed to twist their ankles sitting at the chess board.
Yeah, Scarlett had heard all the jokes. But the truth was chess was grueling, physically and mentally. Sure, people outside the sport probably thought it was horse hockey to compare it to tennis or swimming, but Scarlett knew better.
High-level chess matches had more minutes of gameplay than football or basketball, and there wasn’t an instant in one when Scarlett wasn’t thinking hard . Afterward, she felt like a depleted battery, and unlike her phone, Scarlett couldn’t plug in and recover in an evening. It could take her days to recuperate after a single difficult round; a tournament could knock her out for months.
Norway Chess had been difficult enough, but Candidates was going to be on another level. In a literal way, Scarlett had to build up her endurance if she was going to survive and get to the actual world championship—and that had been her goal since she’d read about it as a kid. She couldn’t go shirking from practice now.
So her life had turned into the training montage from Rocky but with fewer cow carcasses and no triumphant posturing in front of a museum. Kit had even gotten a navy blue knit cap, and they treated Scarlett and Martina to a pretty-on-point Burgess Meredith impression when things were getting dicey.
But the jokes about how she should eat lightning and crap checkmates aside, Scarlett couldn’t ask for two better trainers and seconds than Kit and Martina. Honest to gosh, Scarlett had never been so grateful in her life for anyone as she was for these friends. When she’d been younger and stupider, Scarlett had tried to do this on her own—and it had been nearly impossible.
Given that Alma wasn’t exactly mother of the year material and that Scarlett was in touch with precisely no one else she shared DNA with, given how often she’d moved and how terrible she was at keeping up with old friends, and given that most other top chess players hated her for one reason or another, Scarlett had sometimes imagined she was alone in life.
But the last six months had proved what ripe garbage that was. Scarlett needed support, desperately. You might play chess one on one, but you didn’t play it alone . At least not if you were going to be any good at it.
Something had shifted in the last two years: writing with Jaime, teaching Clara to play chess, watching the crew film Queen’s Kiss , and preparing for Candidates with Martina and Kit. It had melted the chip off her shoulder, the one that had had her asserting that, whatever she’d done, she’d done it entirely by herself.
Scarlett might be polarizing, but she wasn’t a maverick—and she didn’t want to be. Scarlett could be scrappy and capable and still get help from other people. From her friends.
It might have been better to have realized that earlier. Say, eighteen years earlier, when she’d made a unilateral decision about what to do about Dr. Croft. Or six months earlier, when she’d tried to shield Jaime from nasty stories in the local paper—but nope, that was the third rail. It was the subject she’d made off limits inside her own head. Nothing good came from spending any more time contemplating that particular boondoggle.
Besides, she had other stuff to deal with. Like how to handle the Scotch Game when she was playing black.
“Well, Kasparov would want me to regain the upper hand in the middle of the board,” Scarlett answered Kit. They’d spent a lot of time studying Garry Kasparov the last few months; Scarlett had made WWGKD beaded bracelets, and they were all wearing them now.
“How?” Kit pressed.
“I take the d4 pawn.”
“Then?”
“Well, I have to be careful with my king. I don’t want to lose the ability to castle.”
“And how are you going to not do that?”
See, this was the point of friends: Scarlett would’ve chewed the face off anyone else who’d spent ten hours with her day after day, especially when she’d returned from the set of Queen’s Kiss almost feral with heartbreak.
The necessity of it aside, prepping for Candidates had been a tunnel out of the darkness. Scarlett hadn’t been able to sink into depression: she had ten thousand moves and game diagrams to memorize. She knew her first-round opponent would be Alik Svensson, and he was the favorite to win the tournament and face the reigning world champion. That round would be followed by thirteen more. Altogether, she would play seven opponents multiple times, over a punishing two-and-half-week schedule. She had to crawl inside their minds and understand what made them tick. What did they do when they were confident? What did they fall back on when they were afraid?
Chess was almost like getting to know a lover. It felt that intimate and, at times, that brutal.
And these days, Scarlett was an expert on the brutality of love.
When she’d gotten back to New York, Kit and Martina had managed to ask precisely the right amount of questions, both about Scarlett’s recent breakup but also about her soon-to-be chess opponents. And they showed exactly the right amount of rage on her behalf on both scores.
“So I set up the two-knight variation of the Italian Game,” Scarlett concluded her response to Kit. “But Svensson probably counters with the Max Lange Attack.”
“Very good,” Kit said. “And then—”
“How do we counter Jaime Croft when he goes on TV and continues to make it sound as if he’s your white knight?” Martina had watched Hear Her this morning, and she was currently plotting a different kind of game, a much more bloodthirsty one. If Jaime weren’t careful, he was going to find himself getting maimed by a grand master.
Scarlett had had to tell her friends something . She’d kept most of it to herself—what had happened was honestly too sordid and embarrassing to admit to it all out loud—but she’d stuck to the original ending: Scarlett had shot her shot, and Jaime had said no. On that basis alone, Martina thought he deserved to pay.
If Martina had known the entire story, she would already have exacted retribution, and it would have been far messier than whatever Scarlett was going to do to Svensson on a chess board.
“Jaime wasn’t trying to make himself look good,” Scarlett said wryly. “He was trying to give me some cover.” If anything, he’d let Scarlett do most of the talking on Hear Her , acting as if he were her arm candy. Though he’d seemed too jumpy and guilty to truly pull it off.
“After that asshole turned you down—”
“Which was his call to make. I mean, I called the police about his dad, and then in his eyes, I went rogue with a reporter.” Scarlett had told them that part of the story too. It was possible that getting through it had involved a lot of ice cream, Kahlúa, and tears.
Interestingly, Scarlett had felt better afterward. Maybe she should have started spilling her guts to Kit and Martina years ago. Maybe that was actually—breaking news here, someone ought to call Dionne Warwick—what friends were for.
“Look, that was the right thing to do,” Kit assured her. “He’s entitled to get miffed because—”
“He’s an ungrateful louse!” Martina said.
“—you didn’t talk to him first, but punishing you is overkill.”
If Jaime was punishing anyone, it was himself. He wasn’t nearly as good as Scarlett at keeping those things stuffed down. Emotions ended up written all over his body. If he wasn’t careful, the man would ruin that pretty face of his with scowl and stress lines.
“He’s on his own journey, y’all, and he’s been very clear that he doesn’t want me on it with him. So I wish him the best.” Somewhere inside her, Scarlett could probably find a good wish for Jaime. She wished petty things for him too—that his pillow would always be lumpy and his avocados eternally bruised—but honestly, being Jaime Croft seemed exhausting. He needed to cut himself, and everyone around him, some slack. Or else he was going to snap like a rubber band.
It wasn’t his fault his dad had been a prick. He didn’t have to atone for that, and he couldn’t. He couldn’t raise his sister; he could only be her brother. He ought to be there for his mother, but he didn’t need to manage her life. He didn’t have to reimagine television and create new genres. He could just make stuff people liked. It wasn’t his job to reinvigorate Musgrove, Virginia. Or fix how people perceived Appalachia. Or whatever else he might say in interviews. Why had he signed himself up for all those jobs?
As for his love life, well, he was crap at handling that too. Scarlett knew, absolutely knew, he loved her. But if he wasn’t sure whether she could give him what he needed, and if he thought her most chivalrous acts were selfish, then that was that.
It was what had given her a postage stamp of peace, in the end.
Scarlett was a flawed person, but she knew what she could do and what she couldn’t do. And at this point, she couldn’t take on Jaime’s issues and she couldn’t reassure him any more than she already had.
She stopped at a don’t walk sign and glanced up the street. They were walking along Broadway near city hall, down a canyon of granite and concrete and glass that echoed with the memories of a hundred ticker tape parades. She’d never get one, but it was fun to pretend. To roll around in the accumulated glory.
“I’m amazing,” Scarlett told Martina and Kit. “I’m a total boss at chess, and my memoir is getting a movie version. I pulled myself up by my darn bootstraps, and then I made a big stink about how unfair the entire system is. Oh, and I’m super hot.”
“ Super hot,” Martina echoed, patting her shoulder.
“If Jaime doesn’t want me, well, whoop-de-do. I’ll find someone else.”
Scarlett believed everything else she had said, but that last part was a total bluff. If Jaime didn’t want her, she would be fine, but there would be a rip in the fabric of her life that nothing and no one could stitch back together.
Scarlett didn’t want to be a person who believed in fate or karma, but they seemed to believe in her. Specifically, they seemed to believe that she got one and only one big love in her life: Jaime Croft. She’d faced impossible decisions where that love was concerned, and she’d played her position the best she could. But in the game she and Jaime had been locked in since they were kids, the one where her heart was on the line, she’d hung her queen.
There was nothing she could do to salvage things, so she was resigning. It sucked, it totally sucked, but that was what happened sometimes. It was better to know when you were beaten than to keep up hope.
The light turned, and Scarlett, Martina, and Kit started down Broadway again.
“So if we’re done with Svensson and his Scotch Game, what about Kaushal Bhatia? He loves rook endgames,” Scarlett said.
Martina tsked. “You cannot lose your bishop early against him.”
“Easier said than done.” Which was true about pretty much everything.
Scarlett had blown things with Jaime. She wasn’t going to make the same mistake with her chess career.
A few hours later, Scarlett had grabbed a quick nap and poured herself into a gown. While she’d told herself things were over with Jaime, she’d strategically picked every item of clothing for this promo push in order to maximize his pain and suffering. He had always liked her cleavage, and she had no qualms at all about reminding him of what he was missing.
Hey, she’d never claimed to be a nice person or anything.
When Scarlett emerged from her car onto the red carpet for the Brooklyn Film Festival, Clara was already dutifully posing for the cameras. Emphasis on the dutiful part. The girl did not seem to enjoy the fame portion of her job—which was a bummer, since Queen’s Kiss was going to make her really famous.
Clara and Scarlett had stayed in close touch over the last six months: playing chess online, exchanging memes, and snickering about celebrity gossip. They’d even coordinated so they were both wearing burgundy tonight. But in contrast to Scarlett’s deep-V gown, Clara’s bateau-necked retro number was positively demure. Scarlett looked as if she’d escaped from Vegas, and Clara was ready for a tea party.
“Who’s the movie star here?” Scarlett demanded, hugging the actress while the photographers went wild.
The thing about being in public since she was a teen was that Scarlett could almost predict which candid was going to dominate tomorrow’s coverage. This was going to be the shot.
“You are.” Clara clutched Scarlett’s hand. “I’m so glad you’re here.”
Scarlett leaned close to whisper in her ear. “Just remember that they’re here to see you .”
Clara looked amused at the prospect, but at least that brought out a genuine smile on her face.
After they posed for a few more shots, they stopped and schmoozed with several reporters. That part at least seemed to center Clara, and she was almost her normal chatty self by the time they got to the head of the red carpet.
There, Jack Davis, one of the most influential reviewers and entertainment writers in the business, was interviewing Jaime.
Tuxes were ... they were so unfair. They were basically a uniform, right? What could be more mass produced or standard issue? But upon seeing Jaime in an extremely well fitted, extremely flattering tux, Scarlett’s heart started going like a hound chasing a possum.
He won’t let himself want you. He’s not going to change his mind about that, she reminded herself.
But when he looked like that . When he glanced over at her and, for three seconds straight, stared into her eyes. When, at last, his gaze slid down her body and got stuck on her cleavage.
Well, it was very hard to talk herself out of being a dingbat where Jaime Croft was concerned.
It was a good thing that after tonight, she wasn’t going to have to see him again for months. And once Queen’s Kiss debuted on Videon, she wasn’t going to have to see him at all.
The thought left her inexpressibly glum.
“And here’s Scarlett now.”
Unnecessary as that observation was, Scarlett appreciated how Jaime’s voice cracked when he made it.
“Scarlett Arbuthnot.” Jack Davis shook her hand firmly. Now there was another finely aged man. But sadly, he was wearing a wedding ring.
It was a double bummer because, in the wake of Jaime, Scarlett had had trouble even noticing other men. It wasn’t as if she’d had any free time, what with all her preparations for Candidates, but she’d like to be able to look.
“It’s great to meet you,” he said.
“Likewise,” Scarlett said. “And this is Clara Hess.”
“I’ve heard great things about your performance, Clara. I can’t wait to see it.”
“You a chess fan?” Scarlett was curious if reporters who didn’t know squat about the game would be able to follow the show. Because if they couldn’t, she and Jaime would’ve failed at their jobs.
“Oh yes. And I’ve always wanted to ask you—how did you decide which way to move your king in that match with Petrov?”
Scarlett had no difficulty knowing exactly which match and exactly what move Jack meant. She should’ve been steamrolled by Petrov—he was a former runner-up for the world championship, and she’d been a nobody. But that hadn’t been what had happened.
“Well, I knew I’d lose if I went left, so I went to d7 instead, hoping to eke out the draw.” When she had, commentators had called the result “amazing,” because she’d blundered early.
Scarlett had never truly adjusted to the reality that sometimes you won by not losing in chess. Maybe that was why her mother would never consider it a real sport.
“Mind blowing,” Jack said. “Your play is—ballsy.” That sounded like the ultimate compliment from him.
Jaime’s attention was flicking back and forth between Scarlett and Jack, and he seemed deeply annoyed. Wasn’t having reporters drool over her a good thing? Wouldn’t that ensure the show got good coverage?
Besides, Scarlett had had so many men fawn over her for similar plays over the years that she knew Jack didn’t really mean anything by it. He wasn’t hitting on her.
Still, Jaime did not like it. Jaime didn’t want Scarlett, but he apparently didn’t want anyone else to want Scarlett either.
It was sexy and aggravating in equal measures. But the thing was, it didn’t have to be like this, did it? It was only Jaime’s own stupidity that had made it so.
Despite the wedding ring on Jack’s finger, and without any intention of doing anything other than pissing off Jaime, Scarlett set her hand lightly on the reporter’s forearm and leaned in close. “You have no idea.”
She loaded that up with enough heat and innuendo that Clara blushed and looked away. Jack just blinked at her, several times in quick succession: she’d stunned him into silence. Scarlett didn’t even have to look at Jaime to feel the blast of displeasure from him.
Served him right.
Scarlett dropped her hand from Jack’s arm and straightened. She’d learned how to do that, to fold up the flirtation and slip it into her pocket the same way someone else might with a tissue. But she didn’t need it any longer; she’d made her point. When she spoke again, the suggestion of more was completely gone from her tone. “You find me afterward, and we’ll dissect more of my matches.”
Jack, who’d returned to himself from wherever her smolder had sent him, cleared his throat. “Will do.”
“You ready to go in?” Scarlett asked Clara. She was still determinedly not looking at Jaime, but she could feel his displeasure as clearly as she could feel the plush carpet cushioning her shoes. Where he was concerned, she was an unerring mood ring.
“Yup,” Clara chirped.
Then Scarlett took off into the movie theater, trusting Clara was behind her and Jaime was glaring at her retreating back.
She hoped he was enjoying the view.
When Clara and Scarlett were inside and an usher was showing them to their box, the actress again slipped her hand into Scarlett’s. “So I gotta ask, what was that about out there, with Jaime and the reporter?”
Scarlett should’ve known Clara would ask. The girl was too perceptive, and Scarlett had spent several months training her to notice things.
She arranged her skirt around herself as she sat. “How much time do you have?”