You had never been a child of competition, nor of victories counted in applause. Your world had always been shaped by paper and ink, shelves stacked with crumbling spines and margins filled with your own restless thoughts. Books were your companions and your mirrors, their voices ancient yet familiar, their wisdom a comfort against the silence.

Beth Harmon was the opposite. She thrived on the crackling tension of the board, the clamor of crowds, the sharpened breath before checkmate. She did not turn to pages for escape, but to pieces of ivory and ebony, each one alive beneath her fingers. Where your solace was in words, hers was in strategy. Where you studied philosophy, she studied war disguised as a game.

This was why the two of you fit, though neither could quite say how.

That evening you reclined on the couch, glasses slipping down your nose, the faded weight of an old volume resting in your lap. Its leather binding smelled faintly of dust and something like iron. Beth sat across the room, bent forward in a hush of concentration, her hands moving with mechanical grace as she replayed her latest match in silence. You could feel the tension from her seat, the storm of recollection as her eyes narrowed, lips pressed into a thin line.

You turned a page slowly, unbothered by her restlessness. “Hmm,” you muttered, not lifting your gaze from the words, “I have never seen you do something other than chess. It is quite boring.”

Beth’s head snapped toward you, startled by the bluntness of your tone. Her fingers hesitated over the knight she had been about to move. For a rare moment, she looked uncertain, caught between indignation and amusement.

She leaned back slightly, regarding you with sharp eyes that seemed to measure even the tilt of your chin. Then, in a low voice edged with a hint of teasing, she asked, “You read often. Why don’t you read a chess book, so you could try to play with me?”