Haircut (Beth Harmon X Benny Watts)

Chapter 28

Holy shit, I had missed New York so much. The apartment, the streets, the noises even the smells, which honestly weren't always great, but that didn't matter.

Benny and I were having breakfast with a chessboard in between us and chess books next to us. We were eating scrambled eggs and toast, because we were too lazy to go to the store and buy something else. And besides eggs were good enough.

"Tell me what you just did?" He asked, pointing at the board.

"I moved pawn to queen four." I answered, with my mouth half-full with egg.

He groaned. "Come on Beth, you know what I meant, why did you move it?"

I sighed and looked at the board for a minute. "Because otherwise white could do this..." I shuffled a couple of the pieces. "And then black needs to retreat his knight, what would give white an advantage."

"And?"

"Black could lose the center pawn."

Benny smiled satisfied." Yeah, you got it." He took a sip of his coffee, that had to be almost cold, because we had been busy for a while.

I had also missed this. Not the teaching and learning part perse, that I learned the plays didn't mean I loved them more than intuitive games. But I missed Benny's smile, when I got something right, or his encouragement when I got something wrong.

I smiled at him, while I took a sip from my almost-cold coffee.

He looked up from the board and looked at me questionably. "What is it?"

"Nothing." I said, shaking my head.

"Then why are you smiling?"

'You', is what I wanted to say, but I wasn't going to be that cheesy.

"I'm just glad I'm here." I shrugged.

A smile took over Benny's face. "Yeah, me too. It's might  be hard to believe, but it got very quiet here, once you left. The only thing I heard was Cleo's constant chatter about my life and how full of shit it was."

I know it must have been awful for him, but I couldn't help to smile, seeing Cleo screaming to Benny in my head. I missed her france accent.

When I returned my gaze on Benny, he was already looking at the board again. I sighed, as I turned my head toward the small window just underneath the ceiling. I was only going to be in New York for a few days, and even though I knew that I needed to study, I still wanted to go outside. Maybe Benny and I could go see a movie or go out for dinner, instead of eating leftover pizza.

"I know you might think that relearning all these books isn't necessary, but if you want to beat one particular person, you need to focus."

"I know, I just wished we had more time, so I could wander through New York a bit."

"Don't worry." He said, as he placed the pieces back in their starting squares. "I'll already arranged some fun for tonight."

"What fun?" I asked. "Wait..." I immediately got excited and scared at the same time. "Is Cleo coming tonight?"

"Yes, she is. I didn't really have any saying in it, because once she heard you were here, she called me ten minutes later that she was on her way."

Some nerves started to kick in. I didn't know if Cleo bewas still mad at me for what I've done. She never screamed at me or anything, but she gave me the silent treatment, what was way worse. Whenever I called her she always would pick say something like "no" or "you think that what you're going to say now, is going to make it better?" After a month I stopped calling and never heard from her since.