Chapter 12 Scholar’s Mate #3
And—okay. Hm. Yes. I’m now imagining Faust enjoying watching other men flirt with me, because then he gets to be the one who takes me home and… I take a long sip of water before I forget my current chess strategy. “You are surprisingly perverted,” I grumble.
He sounds like he’s amused, but I refuse to look up. “You asked.”
We continue to play. Faust is a better opponent than I initially gave him credit for, and I hate that I keep having to learn this lesson. When he sniper-shots my bishop from across the board with his, he asks, “Why are you so defensive?”
“I’m not—”
“Cat.”
From food to this? I inhale, my throat tight, turning the captured knight between my thumb and forefinger.
“I wasn’t always… like this.” The glossy wood feels like the only thing standing between me and losing my train of thought.
“I guess I learned that it’s easier to defend the things you love if no one knows you love them. ”
Faust listens attentively, waiting for any follow-up thoughts. “That isn’t a full answer. I asked why.”
“I answered,” I say. Defensively.
“But what taught you? Remember. The deal was honesty.”
In other words: he’ll notice if I don’t give him as much info as he just gave me about his pseudo-voyeur kink.
I have to say something substantial. And even though it feels like I’m trying to wrench the lid off a dusty old cardboard box while it’s still packing-taped shut, I clear my throat and say, “I wanted to design clothes. Which is so hard to get into, you know?” Particularly when you’re a nobody from nowhere.
“So, I guess that’s why I learned to keep secrets.
I didn’t make anyone sad when my dreams didn’t come true.
And if you were Sigmund Freud or something, then you could say I’ve usually chosen other people over…
” What I want to do, my brain fills in. But that isn’t right. I love doing this. “Yeah.”
For a long moment, Faust just looks at me, and I feel this tiny, maniacal excitement that he’s listening to me. He understands. “If no one ever knows what you want,” he says softly, “then no one ever knows if you don’t get it.”
And that’s the downside of glitter: it has a habit of sticking around in places you don’t want it to.
“Wow! We do have Freud over here.” I laugh.
Then I take a big drink of water. Then I murder his offending bishop with my king.
“My turn. Why did you use my work as your girlfriend-preference example?”
His eyes widen with surprise. Got him again. “You’re a good case study.”
“Of the prototypical athlete-influencer relationship?” I ask, but he gives me a look, playfully defensive. One piece, one question.
The reminder is helpful. Faust doesn’t keep the conversation on himself, like most people I know.
I ask him these big questions, and he keeps asking me bigger ones.
And I already don’t like how overexposed this game feels.
We’re not two people getting to know each other over dinner and chess.
As marginally magical as getting to see this side of him is—like he’s chosen me to open up to, out of everyone else in his life—we aren’t friends.
After more roses from Bernard, we’ll probably be less than that.
I play a bit sloppier for the rest of the game. Rushing in, trying too hard. Faust wins another pawn when I’m not paying attention. Spinning the piece between his finger and thumb, he says, “Any tattoos?”
“No,” I answer without thinking.
“No?”
I shake my head but can’t stop looking at him.
He just has a face that’s so—open. It’s a window that most might mistake for a curtain.
We’re quick to think athletic men are masterminds; 4D chess players because they can drive a complicated car faster than 99.
9 percent of the human population. And Faust is smart, maybe freakishly smart.
But he’s an open book, too. A very complicated, linguistically dense, brag-to-your-friends-you-read-it open book.
And there’s this tiny speck of hurt behind his brown eyes. Though it’s mixed with something else, too, something bright and electric.
Hope?
“Cat, Cat, Cat.” When he speaks next, darkness colors his voice. An old wound. “You’re still lying to me.”
My stomach flips.
“I’m not. I…”
Then I remember the pool, and my bikini, and Faust leaving in an angry rush.
The tattoo of a running red rabbit tucked along my ribs.
Is that what made him angry that day? I click through reasonings, pathways that’d explain that moment he left.
He really doesn’t like tattoos, saw you had one, and stormed off.
No, he literally has one himself. He harbors an irrational hatred of rabbits.
Possible, but easily Occam’s razored. Because the simplest answer to why Faust would see something private about me, and get angry that Bernard might’ve had the chance to see it first, and the reason why Faust is mad that I’m lying to him about it now—why he always shows up when I don’t expect him to and invited me out to dinner with him before Bernard could take me out—why he looks so hopeful is that he’s proven, once and for all, that I’m a liar, that I’m not interested in Bernard.
He knows.