Crushing on the Geek(3)

Tamara quickly recounted her limited knowledge of the game as Hayden rejoined them and set up the board one piece at a time. His fingers traced the contour of each piece as if he were committing it to memory. Tamara felt heat creeping up her neck onto her cheeks. She wished she had paid more attention when her grandfather had tried to teach her to play.

“At least you know to protect the king,” Hayden chuckled.

Tamara crossed her arms and narrowed her eyes.

“No, seriously, I’ve met people who don’t even know that.”

“Sucks to be them,” Greg said, leaning back in his chair.

“You’re playing white so you go first,” Hayden said.

“I know.”

“Are you going to take your turn? You can only move a pawn to start with. They normally only move one, but on the first turn….” Hayden began to explain.

“I know that!” Tamara said and moved a pawn forward two spaces.

“If it were me I would have moved the pawn to the left of that one,” Greg said.

“Well, it was me, not you!”

“No, it's okay, just remember for the next game.”

“No, not that piece! If you move it there he could capture it in like three moves, maybe even two!”

“Then let him have it, if he's going to go through all that trouble for one little pawn!”

“Don't move that one either!”

“Greg! Please! Shut up! I can't think!”

Greg fell into silence, but out of the corner of her eye Tamara could see him covering his eyes and making pained faces with every piece she moved.

“Greg, quit making faces every time I try to make a move! I can’t concentrate with you doing that! You're acting like I'm about to cut the wrong wire and blow us all up. It's just a game!”

“Sorry, I know it’s a bad habit. You’ve passed up a lot of good moves though. I can't help it! It's too painful to watch you surrender pieces like that. Some of them could have gone on for six or seven turns, maybe more. It's hard to watch pieces get captured too early in the game.”

“Maybe I would have seen them if you weren’t looking like I was about to murder a kitten!” Tamara said.

“I think I’ll go see how everyone else is doing. Maybe play Cindy or something,” Greg said and left the table.

“Checkmate.”

“What?”

“Checkmate.”

“What? How did you do that?”

“Simple.”

“Let’s start again,” Tamara sighed, “If we have time.”

“We have plenty of time. That whole game only took six minutes.”

“Six minutes? It felt like an hour, but that might have been because Greg was acting like I had his life in my hands. I know I suck at this, you don’t have to rub it in,” Tamara said.

“I wasn’t. I was just saying,” Hayden said.

“Whatever, let’s give it another go.”

“I’ll play white this time,” Hayden said pushing the black pieces across the table to Tamara, “If you have questions you can ask, you know.”

“Thanks,” Tamara grinned.

“Greg made me nervous too. I’ve known a lot of people like that. They make great players, but horrible teachers.”

“He’s not a bad guy, but he makes it very hard to concentrate,” Tamara said and watched as Hayden made his first move.

Seven minutes later Tamara knew she had no moves left.

“Checkmate.”

“Seven minutes that time.”

“Don’t focus on your knights so much. They’re good pieces, but it’s okay to lose them.”

“I don’t know about that. If Sir Bedivere sees me sacrifice a knight he might eat me,” Tamara laughed quietly.

“He told you about the statue too then?”

“Yeah, Chess Club is weirder than even I thought it would be.”

“I know a lot of teams, even pro sports teams, have superstitions, but I don't know that I like it. It's like they psych themselves into losing if something goes wrong with it.”

“Okay, guys. I think we’ll cut this meeting short, just don’t mention it to Mrs. Kelly. It’s Friday and I want out of here as much as you guys do,” Greg said.

“Thank You!” Tamara said, jumping to her feet.

Hayden opened his mouth to speak, but Tamara was already out of the room, sprinting down the steps two at a time. Many of the sports teams held practice on Friday afternoon and Tamara didn’t want to be seen with Greg and the others. Hayden was cute, but he was still part of the Geekville. She pulled her cell out of her back pocket intending to call her mom to let her know the meeting ended early.

“A new text?” Tamara said out loud.