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January 1976
Freddie takes his first international tournament by storm.
Florence has to beg for two weeks off from her museum job she’s been working at for four months. They know what she’s doing, and they find it impressive, but when it interferes with the shift schedule—she already hates it. She isn’t using her degree, she just works at the front desk. She’s still applying other places.
Every waking moment she isn’t working, in the months of lead-up, is spent on chess. She and Freddie play chess. They talk about chess. They read about it, about the games of the players that will be there, and then come together and talk about it some more. The pressure isn’t technically as high as it was with the US championship, but it is most certainly there—Freddie is a completely new player on the world’s stage. How will he do? What sort of reputation will he create for himself?
In a way, it’s terrifying, like cautiously stepping out onto a rickety bridge. The two of them have put so many hours into this. Will the bridge hold? Or will it all come crashing down before they even get to the Interzonal? The tournament is small enough that none of the really heavy-hitters are in attendance, but there are one or two that have already qualified for the Interzonal as well. And it’s their first time competing outside the US.
As it turns out, Florence shouldn’t have been worried. They get to Amsterdam and Freddie wins first place. It’s completely intoxicating.
They spend the rest of the night celebrating—they go to the fanciest-looking restaurant they can find within walking distance and order appetizers along with their meal, and then go out to find a bottle of champagne. They take turns drinking straight from the bottle while leaning against the railing overlooking one of the many canals, just talking through the last few suspenseful games, and they can barely feel the chill in the air. Freddie can’t stop grinning, can’t stop talking, and his eyes are bright and sparkling from the streetlights. Florence feels like she might as well be walking on air, and it wasn’t even her win. She’ll looks back on it as a perfect moment.
And then Freddie kisses her.
Florence is so shocked she freezes in place, and Freddie just kind of sits there for a moment. When he pulls back, she blinks at him in shock, and then realizes he has this look on his face—a grimace.
“Uh. Nevermind,” he says, and turns and walks away.
It takes her a good few seconds to get her wits about her again. “Excuse me?” she calls after him, already halfway down the block. She starts follow him, suddenly feeling very much like she is owed an explanation. “Freddie! What the hell was that?”
“Nothing!” he shouts over his shoulder, starting to walk faster. Florence worries he’s going to break into a sprint, and she’ll never be able to catch up with him in heels, but he doesn’t. She finally gains on him when he has to stop at a crosswalk for fear of being run down by a motorcycle.
“Freddie,” Florence says, grabbing his arm. He tries to jerk it away, but she holds on tight. “What’s gotten into you?”
“Nothing, forget about it!” he says indignantly. “I’m drunk, that’s all.”
“You are not drunk,” she says, because she’s currently holding the champagne and they’ve barely made it through half the bottle, and she’s had most of it because he’s been mostly talking.
He tugs at his arm again. “Well what do you want from me?” he demands.
He won’t meet her eyes, looking anywhere but at her, and she gets a distinct feeling there is something wrong beyond simple embarrassment. They’re in the way now, and people have to step around them to use the crosswalk. Gently, Florence releases Freddie’s arm, hopeful now that he won’t try to leave again. “Let’s find somewhere to sit,” she says.
There’s a tiny park down the road, and the benches are all occupied in spite of the January chill, but there’s a low brick wall they sit on. It’s silent between them for a few long moments, neither looking at the other. Freddie cracks first.
“Look, if you want to be mad at me, fine! I shouldn’t have done it,” he says.
“I’m not mad. But I don’t think that should happen again,” Florence says slowly.
She’s thought about it before, of course—her school friends have mistaken Freddie for her boyfriend countless times. She’s tried to work it out before, watching for signs of interest from Freddie, almost warily. Maybe once or twice he’s said something that could be construed as flirting, but on the whole, he’s never really done anything that would make her think he wants anything like that from her. Until now, anyway.
“No,” he agrees with a sigh, and then deflates until his elbows are on his knees and his hands are threaded through his hair. “Jesus. What am I supposed to do now?”
He says it more to himself than to her, but Florence hears it, and she turns it over in her head.
Freddie has asked a lot from Florence, since they met, but never this. And he hasn’t had a girlfriend since she’s known him, and has never mentioned having had one previously. He’s never really spoken about women at all. And that could easily be chalked up to being the kind of boy she knew in her club back in England, that spent all their time on chess and had no idea how to approach women, but—nothing? Never even going so far as to mention an actress’s looks?
“Have you ever kissed a woman before?” she asks cautiously. He shifts just so he can peek through his fingers, just enough to glare at her. The answer is obvious, but it’s more of a rhetorical question anyway. “Well, I have.”
His head jerks up, and he stares at her, eyes wide and mouth agape. “Huh?”
“You remember when Joyce came to visit?” she asks, and he nods. “She’s actually my ex. We dated for a year in uni.”
Freddie sits up a little bit straighter, and he looks like he’s trying to do complex mathematics in his head. But he hasn’t responded negatively so far and he looks less like he’s drowning in despair, so her gamble seems to be paying off.
“But… what about Victor? And Adam?” he asks.
Florence rolls her eyes. Neither of them had lasted long, mostly because between grad school and chess, she didn’t have much time left over for dates. “What about them?” she asks. “I’ve dated men and women. Honestly, I think I like women a little bit better, but men are easier to find.”
“…huh,” Freddie says. Florence offers him the champagne, and he only hesitates a moment before taking a swig from the bottle.
“Do you want to talk about it?” Florence asks cautiously, when he doesn’t say anything more, just holding the neck of the bottle and staring out at the park.
“No,” he says immediately, but after a pause he keeps talking. “I don’t know. I guess I just thought if I tried…”
“Wasn’t what you expected?” Florence asks, and then laughs at the face he makes.
“No offense,” he says. “But… yeah, that wasn’t it.”
“Did you not know?” she asks.
Freddie’s shoulders slump. He still won’t really look at her. “I was kinda trying not to,” he says, kicking his feel against the brick wall. “I mean, in high school I was focused on chess. And it’s… just been chess, ever since.”
Florence thinks back to the day she met him, when he was sitting in the corner by himself with a book, the best player in the room and with nobody to talk to. “You know, there are men…” she starts, but he’s already shaking his head.
“I can’t,” he says. “You know I can’t.”
“Well, why not? There are places you can go to meet people in the city,” she says gently. “We could go together.”
He laughs, but it’s high and desperate. “What if someone found out? I couldn’t—” He stops himself, taking a steadying breath. “It doesn’t matter, anyway. I still have chess. That’s what matters.”
Florence gets it. She’s felt a similar way—easier to run away than to jump so fully into the unknown. But still… “Sounds lonely,” she says.
Freddie scoffs. “Who’s lonely? I’m surrounded by people all the time,” he says, even though he knows it’s not the same. “And I’ve got you.”
Florence nods. “You’ve got me,” she agrees gently. That’s what matters right now. He is safe with her—they are safe with each other.
It’s late. She puts a hand on his back, rubbing in small circles. “I’ve lost the cork for the champagne, so we need to finish it tonight,” she says. He laughs, the first real smile she’s seen since the kiss.
They make their way back to their hotel room together, passing the bottle back and forth. They go back to talking about chess on the walk, and the air between them doesn’t quite go back to the elation of earlier in the day, but there is a sort of quiet joy to it—of winning, of possibility, and of being understood. And they have a whole free day tomorrow with which to explore Amsterdam without a tournament hanging over them before they have to go back home.
Maybe once they're back in New York, between work and preparations for the next tournament (in Argentina, next month), she can convince him to go with her to a gay bar, maybe put himself out there. Maybe she can push him to see that there’s more to life than playing chess and being afraid of yourself. But even she can’t, he’ll at least have a friend.
Birds of a feather and all that.