Sam had explained some of that vaguely to Hector, but being here now and having it spelled out for him was starting to make him nervous. Not wanting to let Walter in on his teetering nerves, he played it off by shrugging again. “Yeah, I know,” he said as the self-doubt sunk in fast.

Charlie and her friend walked by them and Walter’s shoulders went all limp again as the goofball smile once again made an appearance. He bobbed his head up and down then actually bit his bottom lip and held his teeth there as he continued bobbing his head. Charlie smiled at him while the blonde looked away, and Hector could only assume she was trying not to laugh. “The team is sitting over there,” Charlie said, pointing toward a group by the back door.

She glanced at Hector again, giving him another glimpse of those dramatically blue eyes, but like all the other times, she quickly looked away, and she and her friend kept walking.

After a few seconds of staring at the back of her head and that intensely scarlet ponytail, Hector brought his attention back to Walter, who was still doing the slumped shoulder thing and bobbing his head. “Why are you doing that?”

Walter looked at him and stopped. “It’s called muted confidence. Read about it. I’m giving her the impression that I’m cool, confident, and just, you know, chillin’.” He started bobbing his head again.

Hector couldn’t help laughing again. “You’re giving her the impression that you’re a moron. You look like an idiot. What’s with the biting your lip shit?”

“It’s sexy!”

“No, it isn’t.” Hector laughed even more but made an effort to not ridicule Walter. The guilt of having done that to him for years was something he was still dealing with. He cleared his throat and stopped laughing, especially since he saw Walter’s expression go all serious as he gazed in her direction.

“So her name is really Charlie?”

“Yeah, but not like a guy. It’s Charlee spelled with a double e at the end.” Walter took a deep breath. “Charlee Brennan. Isn’t she beautiful?”

Hector was still stuck on the odd name. Charlee? “She’s cute,” he said, following Walter’s gaze.

More like okay, and he left out what else he was thinking, if you’re into white girls. Hector wasn’t, never had been, especially ones this snowy white. The neighborhood he grew up in and the schools he’d attended his whole life had maybe a handful of them. He had nothing against them; he just didn’t think he could relate. Everyone he hung out with was Hispanic, and so he was attracted mainly to Hispanic girls. He liked his girls with a little color, and, by that, he didn’t mean bright red on white. He was into dark hair, dark eyes, and the darker the better—like Lisa. He pushed away the annoying thoughts of Lisa blowing him off so easily.

“She’s amazing,” Walter was still gazing in her direction. “And she’s always nice to me. Like today she always says hi and even made sure I knew where the team was sitting. Stuff like that.”

Hector was about to comment on that: say something like maybe she liked Walter too. Though it was obvious she was just being nice. No way could she or anyone be into Walter. The guy was a mess. And his ridiculous muted confidence bullshit only made things worse, but then it hit him. “You’re on the team? U.S. under 20?”

“Yeah,” Walter turned back to Hector. “So is Charlee. We’re on the team at East Side too.” Walter looked around and lowered his voice. “Personally, I don’t think a speed knockout tournament is the way to go about looking for a replacement on the team. But we’d made it into the Junior World Olympiad just before the whole cheating scandal broke, and we had to drop that player. Luckily, they didn’t punish the whole team by disqualifying the team, but they did give us only so much time to fill that spot. With a regular tournament taking days, we had no choice but to do a one-day knockout tournament.”

Hector tried not to stare at Walter’s bushy eyebrows as Walter peered at him. Did the guy not realize a near unibrow was not an attractive quality to girls? “You really think you have a shot at this?”

Again, shrugging off any signs of nervousness, Hector glanced away at the crowd growing larger with every minute they stood there. “Sure, why not?”

He wouldn’t tell Walter that speed chess was his specialty. He knew a lot of serious players looked down on speed chess as if it weren’t as dignified as playing the six-hour games. Walter’s lowered-voice comment about this not being the greatest way to pick up the best player to fill the open spot on the team, was all Hector needed to know—Walter was one of those chess snobs.

Looking around again for Sam and not seeing him anywhere, Hector knew he had to get on with it and get registered. Sam had said he’d be there to walk him through the whole thing, but it looked like he was on his own now. With a deep breath, he turned back to Walter. “Well, I better get going if I’m gonna do this. Right?”

Walter smiled. “Best of luck. If you’re anywhere near as good at this as you are at knockout punches, you should do well.”

With that, Hector nodded and started through the crowd, his heart already beginning to thump anxiously.

Chapter 3

From the moment Charlee had spotted Hector with Walter in the parking lot, her heart had gone wild and her entire body literally went warm everywhere. In the past week, her fantasies about this guy had crossed over to another level. The times she touched herself privately now had become more often with him being whom she pictured doing the touching. But she told herself it was only because she truly thought she’d never see him again. And when she Googled her fantasies, she was reassured that erotic fantasies like the ones she’d been having were perfectly normal. But now, seeing him again, she felt almost mortified as if he could read her filthy thoughts. It was irrational, she knew, and though she hadn’t been able to resist looking at him, she’d barely been able to for very long because of those damn fantasies.