Page 36 of Come As You Are

“So I suppose we can just guess?” Sabrina picks up her queen and places it in the center of the board. “I feel like she should be able to do whatever she wants, including skipping over these loser pawns.”

“Agreed.” I consider my own pieces. “Bishop probably can’t go anywhere, being a very serious man of the cloth, right? But look at this little horsey! He can definitely jump over pieces and probably go anywhere on the board.” I pick up the horse and place it right in front of the pawn blocking the king.

“So, your whole skilled-with-games thing, that’s specifically a card thing, huh?”

“A hundred percent.” I glance up at Brian, who’s moderating an argument between two guys who clearly do know chess. “Think he’d mind if I whipped out a deck of cards?”

“Do youhavea deck of cards?”

“Literally always. But hedidjust teach us half the game,so I feel like we should play.” In my head I can hear Salem mocking me for being a softie, but I can also see myself giving him the finger, so I feel like it all evens out.

“Fine, then. I’m gonna take one of your pawns with my queen.”

“That’s fair,” I say with a nod as Sabrina sweeps her queen across the board and knocks off one of my defenseless little guys. “And I’m gonna do the same with my horsey.” I take off the pawn in the adjacent square and move in my piece, just as a girl from the table next to us says, “It’s called aknight.And it moves in an L shapeonly.”

I’m about to open my mouth to thank her for the information, even if she’s being a little B about how she imparts it, when Sabrina says, “Not in our version.”

The other girl rolls her eyes but returns to her game to mind her own business, and I make a mental note that maybe I’m channeling the wrong Grayson twin in my endeavors.

And also to stop calling it a “horsey,” maybe.

We settle into our game, making up rules as we go along and talking about our other cocurricular choices. I hadn’t even known there’s a tarot club on Mondays, or that Sabrina’s signed up for Book Club tomorrow, same as I am. “Guess we’re going to spend the entire first meeting fighting about what book to read,” she says as she takes another of my pawns with her queen. She’s done that every move so far, leaving me with one left.

“Can’t wait.” I actually kind of can’t. I used to only read books with happy romances and happier endings, but these days I feel like I could stand to be introduced to books with revenge and murder. Or at least dragons.

But speaking of happy romances and happier endings, it occurs to me that I know very, very little about Sabrina’s once-happy romance and its very unhappy ending. I know it isn’t any of my business, per se, but, well, I’m trying to get my shit together so I can have a normal relationship someday, and maybe Sabrina would like to come along for that ride.

“Can I ask you an incredibly invasive question?”

“What better time is there to be incredibly invasive than over a chessboard?”

“That’s shockingly open of you,” I say as I jump my other knight around on the board, taking him on a little sightseeing tour of the black and white squares.

She shrugs. “If it’s none of your business, I’ll tell you it’s none of your business.”

“Oh, I already know it’s none of my business.”

“Great, then you’re prepared for my answer. But I’m warning you that if your question is anything like ‘How can two girlsdothat?’ I’m going to be extremely graphic.” She takes my last pawn with a flourish.

“Jesus, no, obviously not.” I survey the board, and decide that a king can definitely move as many squares as he wants. I move it toward the queen, but I’m not sure whether he can take her; Sabrinadidsay the queen was the most powerful piece. “I was just wondering about Molly. Why the two of you broke up, I mean. And whether you think you’re ready to date again. Or is it one of those things where it’s not really over?”

“No, it’s definitely over,” she says flatly. “She thought we were getting too serious, and wanted to date other people. I can’t even hate her, because sure, it’s valid. But Iwasserious,and it came out of nowhere, and it just really fucked with me. How one person can think things are literally perfect while the other one is writing a breakup speech.”

“Makes you feel like you can’t trust anything, including your own instincts,” I mutter. “Especiallyyour own instincts. And how can you not hate the person that now permanently makes you doubt yourself?”

I’d kind of forgotten I was speaking aloud until Sabrina says, “Yes,exactly. That’s exactly it. Everything feels shaky now.”

“Yeah.”

Sabrina and I stare at the board, and then she uses her queen to kick my king in the nuts.

Or where I assume his nuts would be if he were not a piece of plastic with a cross on top.

“I think I won,” she says with the faintest of smiles. “Start again?”

Chapter Ten

AFTER ANOTHER ROUSING COMMUNITY SERVICEeffort (recycling!) on Friday afternoon followed by a quick dinner and shower, I roll into Matt and Salem’s room with my own hamper in tow, because I haven’t exactly been on top of my laundry situation either. I imagine most of the students at Camden take advantage of the optional laundry service, but that is decidedly not in the Riley family budget.

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