The Chess Club Checkmate

The Park West Senior Center Chess Club has been mine for five years.

Undefeated champion. Feared strategist. The woman every other player wants to beat but can't.

I'm Patricia Stone. Sixty-one. Former math teacher. Current queen of the board.

Then Robert Washington showed up.

He appears on a Tuesday.

Tall, distinguished, silver beard trimmed neat. Takes a seat across from Tommy Jenkins and proceeds to dismantle him in twelve moves.

"Who's that?" I ask Dorothy.

"New member. Retired judge from somewhere."

"Can he play?"

Tommy's stunned face tells me everything.

"Ms. Stone."

He approaches my table after his victory. "I hear you're the one to beat."

"You heard right."

"Then shall we?" He gestures at the empty chair.

I shouldn't feel excited. It's just chess.

But it's been a long time since anyone made my heart race.

The first game takes two hours.

He's good—better than good. Plays with a style I've never encountered, patient and aggressive in turns.

I win, but barely.

"Same time next week?" he asks.

"You know where to find me."

Tuesday becomes our day.

We play for weeks, the score slowly evening. 4-3 to me. Then 5-5. Then 7-6 to him.

"You're cheating somehow," I accuse.

"I'm learning you." He moves his bishop. "Your patterns. Your tells."

"I don't have tells."

"Everyone has tells." His eyes meet mine. "Yours is your left hand. You tap when you're confident, still when you're unsure."

I didn't know that about myself.

"Your turn," he says after a particularly brutal loss for me. "What have you learned about me?"

"You lean forward when you're attacking. Back when you're defending." I reset the pieces. "You hum when you're happy with a position. Go silent when you're worried."

"What else?"

"You look at me when it's my turn. Not the board. Me."

His smile confirms it.

"Why do you look at me?"

We're walking to our cars after club. The question has been building for weeks.

"Because you're more interesting than the board."

"That's not an answer."

"It's the truth." He stops beside his Buick. "I've played chess for forty years. The game is beautiful, but it's still just a game. You're..." He pauses. "You're something else entirely."

"I'm a sixty-one-year-old woman who plays board games at the senior center."

"You're a brilliant mind wrapped in a beautiful package." He steps closer. "And I've been trying to figure out how to ask you to dinner for two months."

"You could have just asked."

"I could have." His hand finds mine. "Dinner?"

Dinner becomes a regular thing.

Then movies. Then walks in the park. Then evenings at his place, talking until midnight.

"This is strange," I admit one night.

"Meeting someone at sixty?"

"Feeling like this at sixty." I look at our intertwined hands. "I'd given up on this."

"On what?"

"Connection. Desire. All of it."

"Maybe you just needed the right opponent."

The first time we make love is after I finally beat him 10-9.

"Victory deserves a reward," he says, pulling me close.

"What kind of reward?"

"Let me show you."

He undresses me like a strategy.

Slow, deliberate, each move building toward something greater. His hands map my curves with a scholar's attention.

"Beautiful," he breathes.

"I'm old—"

"We're old." He kisses my belly. "Together. Now let me appreciate you."

His mouth is patient.

He takes his time between my thighs, reading my responses like board positions. When I gasp, he adjusts. When I moan, he doubles down.

"Robert—"

"Shh. Concentration required."

I come crying his name.

When he enters me, we both still.

"Okay?" he asks.

"More than okay." I pull him closer. "Your move."

He moves.

Slow, deep, strategic. Building toward an inevitable conclusion.

"So good," he groans. "Patricia—"

"Don't hold back."

"Never."

We come together.

Afterward, tangled in his sheets, he holds me close.

"Who won?" I ask.

"I think we both did."

"That's not how chess works."

"This isn't chess." He kisses my forehead. "This is something better."

The chess club notices the change.

We still compete—fiercely, actually—but there's something different now. Knowing looks. Post-game plans.

"You two are nauseating," Dorothy says.

"You're jealous," I counter.

"Of course I am." She laughs. "Find him a brother."

Robert proposes over a chessboard.

Ring box where my queen should be. Simple silver band, nothing ostentatious.

"Patricia Stone," he says. "Will you let me spend the rest of my moves with you?"

"That's terrible."

"But is your answer yes?"

It's yes.

The wedding is at the senior center.

Chess pieces on every table. Our vows include promises to keep competing.

"I'm still going to beat you," I warn him.

"I'm counting on it." He pulls me into a kiss. "Checkmate, Mrs. Washington."

Marriage at sixty-one wasn't in my plans.

Neither was falling in love over a chess board.

But that's the thing about strategy—

Sometimes the best moves are the ones you never saw coming.

Robert saw me coming.

And I've never been happier to lose.

Game, set, match.

Forever.