The room fell silent as a stone.
This was the kind of silence you lose your eardrums to. “Do or die”, her father once said. Well, here she was do-ing. The man would be proud. She allowed herself lean into the memory of his infectious grin. The way his calloused fingers held every piece with a reverence she had come to emulate. She remembered the patch of skin just under his chin that didn’t grow hair anymore. How he would worry it worrying about his next move. A move he already knew but didn’t trust until he mapped out every possible way it could go wrong. She was the same, her roughly chewed fingernails spoke for her, as she stared at a game she already won. Her final move turned the deafening silence into applause. It was over and this was the hard part. The thing about chess, her father would say is as soon as you’re done, you just want to do it all over again.
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