Chapter 9
Nine
If Mitch moved one of his pawns forward by one space, it’d leave his knight wide open. But if his opponent made the move Mitch suspected he would, to kill Mitch’s knight, it’d leave his opponent’s queen unprotected.
Mitch moved his pawn.
“You’ll regret that move, young sir,” said Mitch’s opponent, a gentleman in his eighties with a bald head, eyes the color of the Green Mountains in summer, and wrinkles on top of wrinkles.
The lounge room in Montpelier’s long-term care facility was occupied, but not overly so since it was dinnertime and most of the residents were in the dining room.
A small group watched a game show on TV on the opposite side of the room, a lady was reading on a couch behind Mitch, and to his left, a woman was visiting either her father or grandfather.
Mitch had been on his way out the door after his shift, and he’d made what he’d intended to be a short pit stop in the lounge to refill his water bottle at the water cooler.
Then he’d seen Mr. Baldie von Wrinkleson, whose name he’d yet to learn, sitting all alone in front of a chess set and had offered to play, even though he was supposed to be getting home.
He was tutoring in two hours, another soul-crushing session teaching algebra to a couple of freshmen. Fuck his life.
Mr. Baldie von Wrinkleson moved his remaining rook.
“That’s cheating!” It had been a while since Mitch played chess, but he remembered the rules, and the rook didn’t move diagonally.
Mr. von Wrinkleson harrumphed. “Didn’t think you’d notice. Young people these days, they think they’re so smart.” He killed Mitch’s knight with the rook, then Mitch moved his bishop. “Check,” Mitch said. “Checkmate, actually.”
Mr. von Wrinkleson sat back and gripped the arms of his chair. “Well, I’ll be damned. You know, I haven’t lost a game since I was a teenager?”
Mitch grinned, unrepentant. “Sorry?”
Mr. von Wrinkleson laughed, apparently delighted that he’d just had his ass kicked by someone six decades younger. The suspicion growing in Mitch since he’d sat across from Mr. von Wrinkleson an hour ago solidified into certainty. His eyes, his laugh, they reminded Mitch of—
“Forest?”
Alex. As if Mitch had conjured him, Alex stood next to their table in dark jeans and a navy pullover, his leather jacket folded over his arm.
“Judd!” said Mr. von Wrinkleson. Or Forest Dean, it appeared. “I didn’t know you were stopping by.”
Judd was…Alex’s dad?
Alex pulled over a chair from a nearby table and sat between Mitch and Forest. “Hey, Mitch.” The smile Alex sent Mitch was friendly and warm.
Alex raked his gaze over Mitch, lingering longer than usual, and…
Was there something in his eyes? Some unnamed emotion that hadn’t been there before?
Not heat. Not lust. But more than friendship.
Want? That was maybe too strong a word, but there was something there.
Whatever it was, it made Mitch’s stomach clench.
“Forest, I see you’ve met my friend Mitch.”
“Indeed.” Forest crossed his arms and sent Mitch a glare that was more playful than angry. “He just whooped my patooti at chess.”
“He—” Alex’s head swivelled to Mitch. “Nobody’s beat him in years.”
“Young sir, I demand a rematch.”
“I need to get going soon, but how about next Sunday?” Mitch racked up the game pieces and started putting them to rights on the board. “Same time and place?”
“You’re on.” Forest turned to Alex. “How’s my grandson, Judd? Alex still playing hockey?”
Alex seemed to wither right in front of Mitch. The pained stare Alex sent him, the skin around his eyes bunching, caused a lump to form in Mitch’s throat.
“Almost every day,” Alex said.
“Of course he is.” Forest’s booming voice had heads turning their way. “The boy’s got more talent in his pinky than you or I will ever have. Now, if you’ll excuse me.” He stood. “I need to take a leak. Judd, you sticking around?”
“I was going to, yeah.” There was something wrong with Alex’s voice. It was flat and brittle. He watched his grandpa walk away and once Forest had rounded the corner, his shoulders sagged.
Alex probably didn’t realize it, but he flinched every time Forest called him Judd.
Mitch had no frame of reference for what Alex was going through, nothing to compare it to.
What must it be like to so completely look up to someone, only to have that person forget everything you’d gone through together, everything you’d talked about, everything you’d done and seen, everything you’d meant to each other?
Turning to Mitch, Alex sighed deeply. “He’s not going to remember next Sunday that you’re supposed to play chess.” His eyes were as flat as his voice. “Hell, he won’t remember in five minutes.”
Mitch swallowed hard and rested a hand on Alex’s knee. Alex rested his hand on top of Mitch’s and wove their fingers together.
Everything inside Mitch quieted.
In the three plus weeks since Halloween, he and Alex had maybe accidentally, maybe on purpose, stumbled into a routine of sorts.
They spent Monday nights playing Mario Kart with Cody.
Wednesday morning, after Mitch’s practice and before the start of his classes, Alex joined him on the ice for an hour and Mitch taught him the basics of what Alex had dubbed Figure Skating For Dummies (And Hockey).
They worked out together at the campus gym on the Thursday mornings Mitch didn’t have practice.
Alex came to most of Mitch’s home games.
Mitch emailed Alex all of his creative writing assignments—which, incidentally, were still shit.
And in between all of that, they texted like long-lost lovers.
But not once in the six weeks they’d known each other had Alex voluntarily touched him. Alex’s personal space bubble was roughly the size of the moon. Yet today, he’d smiled at Mitch with something more than friendship and touched him?
You could’ve knocked Mitch over with a feather.
It was possible that Alex was simply seeking comfort from a friend, but Mitch’s hopes nevertheless shot up. Did this mean what Mitch wanted it to mean? Should he ask Alex out on a date, a real one this time? Would Alex reject him again if he did?
Idiot, he’s just sad and looking for support.
Yeah. No doubt about it, Mitch was an asshole for thinking about this when Alex was sitting next to him with rounded shoulders, pale skin, and bruises under his eyes. If Mitch was an artist, he’d call it Picture of Dejection.
Mitch propped an elbow on the table and rested his head in his hand. “Doesn’t matter. If he’s here when my shift ends next week, I’m happy to play a game with him. He makes a worthy opponent.”
Alex’s laugh was dry. “Yeah. He remembers chess, but he doesn’t remember me.”
Mitch’s hand jerked under Alex’s at Alex’s broken voice, and his chest burned. His eyes got hot, but he blinked that shit away before Alex noticed.
“Judd!” Back from the bathroom, Forest sat across from Mitch, smile wide. “It’s good to see you, son.” He turned to Mitch. “Who’s your friend?”
Mitch closed his eyes against the spasm that crossed Alex’s face and squeezed Alex’s knee in silent support.
* * *
An hour later, Mitch trudged up the stairs and into his bedroom. He dropped his backpack on the floor, kicked the door closed, and collapsed, face-first, on his bed.
Fuck. Alzheimer’s sucked.
It probably wasn’t a picnic for the person affected, but for the people left behind, like Alex… God.
The numbers on the alarm clock on his night table read 6:02, bright red in the otherwise dark room.
He had an hour to eat before his tutoring session, but the food was downstairs and he was upstairs.
Unless it magically floated up to him, dinner wasn’t happening.
Screw it, he’d make a smoothie before leaving, which was pretty much the only thing he could make with the ingredients in the fridge.
The sun catcher in the window caught his eye, a miniature replica of the one in the living room.
It hung motionless, a dark shape against the night.
Sitting up, Mitch turned on the lamp on his night table, then reached underneath the bed.
His fingers hit something hard and smooth and he felt around until he grasped the metal handle on the side.
Dragging the box out, he hauled it up onto the bed.
The box was a wooden treasure chest with a domed lid, about fifteen inches by ten, finished in dark wood with two metal handles and a matching metal latch.
His brother had made it for him in shop class in high school what felt like a lifetime ago.
There was a skull and crossbones lasered onto the front, except instead of crossbones they were hockey sticks, and the skull was wearing a hockey mask.
There’d once been a time when his brother liked him enough to gift him with the beautiful things he’d made. Mitch played with the latch—open, close, open, close—but instead of lifting the lid, he blew out a breath and hid the box back underneath the bed.
Curling into a ball on top of his comforter, Mitch removed his phone from his pocket, where it’d been digging into his thigh. Thumbing through his contacts, he stopped on the one he didn’t use anymore. Dan Greyson.
Six years older than Mitch, his brother had been the one to walk him to school, to nurse the scrape on his arm when he’d fallen out of a tree, who taught him how to tread water and ride a bike with no hands, and who’d willingly driven Mitch to hockey practices and games when their mother wouldn’t and their dad was working.
Dan used to attend every one of Mitch’s hockey games with a sign that read “Mitch the Witch.” He used to say that watching Mitch play was like watching magic.
Dan thought the nickname was hilarious and they’d never explained its meaning to anyone but Cody, keeping it their little secret.
And then, one day five years ago, all of that had stopped. No warning, no explanation. All he’d got was just “Mitch, I need you to leave it alone for a bit, okay?”
“Leave what alone?” fourteen-year-old Mitch had asked Dan.
“Me.”
Despite how hard he’d tried, how hard he’d pleaded, Mitch was still waiting for the answer to his one burning question: Why do you hate me?
Other than the one email he’d sent his brother this past summer, Mitch hadn’t bothered trying to get in touch with him again over the past few months. Why would he when every time he tried Dan either ignored him, hung up on him, or told him not to call?
But Alex and Forest were on his mind and Mitch could picture his brother in Forest’s place.
If something were to happen to Dan, Mitch would have to live with the regret of knowing he’d done nothing to patch their relationship or make amends for…
well, for whatever Dan hated him for. The anger he felt toward his brother was never far, but on top of it, and much closer to the surface, was rejection, hurt, and an aching sense of loss that hadn’t dulled in five years.
Mitch pressed “call.”
It rang, over and over. It rang some more. Dan probably saw his name on the caller ID and pitched his phone against the wall.
But then the call was picked up. “What, Mitch?” Dan’s voice was hard. Exasperated and impatient. Unfriendly.
Mitch’s heart sank into his stomach and his breathing hitched. “Never mind,” he whispered.
And hung up.