Sunday

Trying to suppress the trembling in my hand, I slid my remaining knight from d4 to e6. “Checkmate” I uttered under my breath. There was no thunderous applause, you don’t really get that in a regional chess game, but the gasps from the spectators were more than enough to communicate the magnitude of the victory. I’d just won a tournament against Evan Boltchek.

Evan was the son of tech billionaire Christophe Boltchek, and he’d been lauded as a prodigy ever since he was born. Magazines and op-eds could never stop praising the intellect of the boy genius, and he had the intelligence to back that reputation. His future career was all but secured, though it was obvious his deepest passion was chess. He’d been sweeping competitions ever since he was a kid. I should know after all, I saw it firsthand.

My grandpa had been a chess fanatic all his life, and wanted desperately to pass the love of the game on to me. Lucky for him, I took to it well and was joining chess clubs from an early age. That’s how I first met Evan, we were at a chess camp when I went up against him. He wiped the floor with me and every other snot-nosed little kid there. Most of them ended up growing out of their chess phase and moving on to other things, but I never forgot him. You can’t forget a child who has that much focus.

I met Evan for a second time during a chess tournament in high school. I’d dedicated countless hours to perfecting my craft and easily earned my seat at the top of the chess club. I was sailing through tournaments until the final round, where I was up against none other than Evan Boltchek. He still had that same cold focus he did as a child.

Our match wasn’t a complete wash like our first encounter, but it was obvious that Evan was the superior player. I’d been developing a bit of an ego, but Evan brought that crashing down in a few moves. After the match I was pretty downtrodden, but thankfully my friend Talia was there to comfort me. She was also in the chess club, but she wasn’t nearly as hardcore about it as I was. I still remember chuckling as she tried telling me it wasn’t the end of the world, laughing at myself for being so upset over losing something as simple as a game of chess. Oddly enough I also remember Evan watching me and Talia as we left, a strange melancholy on his normally stoic face.

With that loss I decided I’d been putting a bit too much of myself into the game. I pulled back and focused on studying, got into a good university (the same as Talia in fact) and studied as a math major. I couldn’t give up on chess entirely, though. It was a way for me to stay close to my grandfather, who had unfortunately passed some years ago. I ended up joining the university’s humble chess club and making some friends of my own.

Abby was something of a chess prodigy in her own right, though she was also a bubbly social butterfly. She had straight, faded brown hair down to her chin and an adorable round face. She also had nice, round tits. Look, I was still a college guy, we notice these things. Abby was so much more than her appearance though, she was kind, supportive, and always eager to celebrate others. She was the first to run up and hug me after every major victory.

Also part of the chess club was my friend Denise. She was a bit more of a goth, frequently dressing in dark colors and makeup to match her wavy, sable-black hair. She was much more stoic in contrast to Abby, but was still a great friend. She was always willing to have deeper conversations with me and offered great advice whenever the moment called for it.

And of course there was Talia. She still played mainly for the fun of it, but that didn’t stop her from thinking up some devious tactics. She was probably the weakest player of the club overall, but we’d all lost a game to her at least once due to some tricky maneuver she was able to pull off under our noses. She had a brilliant strategic mind, but chess wasn’t something she wanted to apply it to in a serious competitive capacity.

Talia and I had gotten close to Abby and Denise throughout our first year in the chess club, and the friend group had only grown stronger since. We didn’t win anything that first year, but heading into the second we started pulling out tournament wins leading up to the coveted regional competition. By the time the tournament came around all four of us qualified to enter, even Talia.

I was pretty excited until I saw a name on the bracket I’d hoped never to see again: Evan Boltchek. Normally I would have resigned myself to the loss, but something about this tournament felt different. I didn’t just want to win for myself, I wanted to bring home the glory for all of us. So I practiced, and I practiced HARD. I studied Evan’s matches and my own tirelessly, all for the sake of taking the win.

The tournament went as I expected it to. I cleared my first round against Talia pretty easily, who was largely unbothered by the loss. Evan was up against Abby in his first round, and she barely put up a fight. I cleared my next round against a random player, and Evan won his next game against Denise with little trouble. It was just us in the finals.

When I went to shake Evan’s hand at the start of the match, I couldn’t see anything but boredom in his eyes. It was clear he expected this game to be a chore like the rest. As the match carried on, however, his demeanor began to shift. I was deploying unique strategies, genuinely catching him off guard. My adrenaline was running like crazy, but I kept my composure. Evan, on the other hand, seemed unfamiliar with being on the ropes. His face distorted with concern as I gained ground, culminating in an upset victory that nobody saw coming.

I stood to shake Evan’s hand, still shaking a bit from the nerves, but he didn’t move. Didn’t react at all. His stunned eyes never left the chessboard. After a few seconds holding my hand out I accepted that I wasn’t going to get any sort of acknowledgement from my opponent and walked off, trying to put Evan’s shell-shocked reaction out of my mind.

As soon as I left the room Abby embraced me with sheer jubilance.

“OH MY GOD NATE YOU DID IT, YOU JUST BEAT EVAN BOLTCHEK!”

Talia gave me her own, slightly less jubilant hug as soon after Abby lessened her deathgrip on my torso. “Looks like you’ve avenged your high school enemy, huh?”

“Yeah… wow.” I chuckled, still processing the win.

“Wow?” Denise interjected. “You just beat one of the biggest chess prodigies of our time, you don’t need to be humble for this one.” She said, obviously suppressing a grin.

“Well…” I began, putting my hand behind my head, feigning sheepishness.

“Nate!” I heard from down the hall, seeing my mom and sister trotting towards me.

“Mom? Sandy? You guys were watching?”

My mom scoffed. “Of course we were, I texted you this morning.” I realized I had been so full of nerves I hadn’t checked my phone all day. Sure enough, mom had texted that she and Sandy were coming down to watch the game.

My mom embraced me tightly, her long auburn hair falling at my shoulders. “I am so, SO proud of you.” Sandy, my excitable little sister also joined in. She was only a year younger than me, and had recently enrolled in my university as a freshman. The moment quickly devolved into an excited chatter among the humble crowd in the wake of a seemingly impossible win.

Before heading off I turned one last time to look at Evan, only to find him staring right back at me. The expression he wore wasn’t neutral like it normally was, nor sad, nor bittersweet. All I saw painted on his face was a cold, calculating rage.