#bethny

Okay, fine. I'll come to New York. Great. We'll leave from here. I'll drive us. When? Tomorrow. Afternoon. Once everything here finishes up.

I like your hair. Uh-huh. Yeah, sure you do.

I went into that game with a perfect score. Benny had two draws, so a draw would give me the title. I wanted to win. I wanted to hammer his weaknesses. I wanted to show that pirate that I could beat him, even though I didn't play the way he thought I should. Then, he captured my center pawn, my protected pawn, the pawn that had held his queen to her corner for most of the game. I don't understand. He forced an exchange of queens. Oh. Couldn't believe it. And then I saw what it meant. With the pawn gone, I was open to a rook-bishop mate, because of the bishop on the open diagonal. I could protect my retreating knight by moving one of the rooks over, but the protection wouldn't last, because his fucking, innocent-looking knight would block my king's escape. The more I looked, the worse it all became. Caught me completely off guard. It was brutal. It's the kind of thing I did to other people. Kind of thing that Morphy did, and I missed it. I'd been thinking about doubled pawns. You were thinking about winning. What did you do? I needed a counter threat. A move that would stop him in his tracks, but there wasn't any. I spent half an hour studying the board, and decided that Benny's move was even sounder than I thought. I thought maybe I could trade my way out of it if he attacked too fast, but… He was careful. I had to retreat, but he kept coming. I wanted to scream.