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“What are we celebrating?” he asks from the kitchen. I hear the smile in his voice.

“Future epics of the heart. Sayingfuck itto the meet-cute. And also... surviving a day together.”

“We still have time to ruin it,” Noah says, returning with a chilled bottle of sake.

“Your choice of outing is up next, you know,” I say as he pours sake into crystal cordial glasses. “But don’t worry, no one expects it to compete with today.”

He raises his glass to mine. “I’m not worried. My excursion is pure gold.”

“You have one picked out?” I assumed I’d have to harass him into making any sort of plan.

“I’m in the final scheduling phase right now.”

“What is it?”

“You’ll see,” he says as we sit down.

We dive into fresh sashimi, spicy tuna on crispy rice cakes, divine crab handrolls, and halibut carpaccio in spicy yuzu jelly that pairs perfectly with the sake.

“You do takeout really well,” I say, sipping my miso soup.

“You should see what I do in restaurants.”

I laugh. “Where does one even get all these little bowls? And the chopsticks—are they made of jade?”

Noah smiles, watching me mishandle them to seize a slice of halibut. “They’re from a shop called Bo’s. Whenever I go there, I find something special, something I’ve never seen before. It’s not far from Peony. You should check it out. He has chopsticks in pink quartz, too.”

“I will.” I don’t want to let Noah know that most of my sushi eating at home happens on my couch, glued to BBC America, using my hands to drag a spicy tuna roll through the soy sauce I’ve squirted into the lid of the plastic container.

He points at the chessboard between us. “Guests go first.”

I steel myself, intent not to laugh when he debuts that freakish eyebrow tic. But to my surprise, Noah has shifted into serious game mode and clearly isn’t messing around.

I move my pawn into the center quadrant. I watch him do the same.

Though we have never sat across the chessboard from each other quite like this, there is not the curious tension of playing the game for the first time with someone new. We’re used to moving these pieces around each other.

We’re not used to knowing where our real hands go in real life between real turns. Twice our fingers graze at the edges of the board.

I remember our first handshake. How it sent a bolt of lightning through me. His touch now, even accidental, still does the same.

I tell myself to pay closer attention to his hands so as to avoid grazing them, but that backfires, because then I pay too close attention to them and lose my knight. I’ve never noticed how strong they are.

Lanie.Remember your career on the line? The precarious balance you are in with this man? Stop gazing at his meet-cuticles. Win the game and go home.

I swig another glass of sake, because something needs to take the edge off. Because, is it just me or is it getting a little tooThomas Crown Affairin here?

I focus on my tactical approach. Noah’s strategy is different IRL than it is online. He castles on his left and brings his queen out daringly early. I find this style familiar, though, and after half a dozen turns, I realize Noah plays chess like the character he wrote in the chess scenes of his novel,Twenty-One Games with a Stranger.

It tells me how to win—a one-two punch with my queen and my bishop.

I wonder whether Noah based that character on himself in other ways. Whether I might revisit the pages of that book to better know the man before me.

But maybe, to know Noah, all I need to do is pay attention. To the paintings he’s chosen for his walls—bright andurgent, each full of its own story. To his generosity—Saturday sushi, second-draft-effect tulips, Swiss Army knife treatments of my ex’s window pane. To his confession at the bar last weekend that, when it comes to romance off the page, Noah Ross is as lost as anyone who’s ever searched for love.

“Checkmate,” Noah says.

My jaw drops. He’s got me pinned between his rooks. How did I let this happen?