Well Played

[BB1BB 107]

I first posted this story over at omorashi.org, so if it ever comes to an unlikely fight over publishing rights, then technically they have first refusal 😄

It was based on a thread about playing board games when desperate. Someone came up with a chess scenario which fired my imagination. The central non-pee story here is as old as the hills and has been done many times over the years. The pee content is all mine though! All characters are totally fictional, although several of Izzy's traits draw direct inspiration from women I adore and admire.

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WELL PLAYED

My local pub, The Crown, had once been a decent hotel, bar and restaurant. But the last few years have been tough for businesses everywhere and now it’s just a humble Indian takeaway. Still, after a rough week at work, there are few places I’m happier to see in the village, and a cool September evening saw me abandon my dinner plans in favour of something spicy with rice.

I placed my order, asked Masood for a pint of Cobra lager while I waited, and sunk into one of the black leather sofas that were dotted around the bar area. Once upon a time there would have been a couple on every table: perhaps a pair of middle-aged lovers, a couple of itinerant sales reps, or just holidaymakers drawn to the area for rock-climbing and kayaking. Tonight there was just me.

On the low level table in the centre of the horseshoe of sofas, Masood had a chess set. Nothing fancy, just some old junk that he’d dug up from the back rooms in unconvincing fake-crystal. One of the black pawns was missing its head, and a white rook was threatening to shatter completely, but every time I sat there, I always reset the pieces opened 1.e4… just to see if any random customers would take me up on a game. They never did, of course, and I invariably whiled away the 40 minute wait by doom-scrolling on my phone or watching football on the one remaining big-screen TV.

I was about halfway through my pint when I heard the front door open and shut, and a brief conversation at the order counter which finished with Masood saying: “Another ten minutes, madam”.

“A Cobra while I wait then please” said a familiar voice, one which I struggled to place for a while. Then Izzy plonked herself in the sofa opposite me, slinging her handbag on the spare seat next to her, took a brief glance at the chess board and quickly moved a black pawn: 1…c5.

I had known Izzy since the Crown was a proper pub and restaurant and we had spent several evenings chatting nonsense and propping the bar up. Being in the countryside, where the farming population are often in bed by 10pm, we were the last customers in the place more than once and our increasingly unsober conversations had covered everything from classical music to cricket. She lived in a converted barn a mile out of the village and ran a little agricultural contracting company with her brother. I guessed that the early harvest was in, otherwise she’d still be working at this time on a September evening. I grinned at her:

“Got time for a full game?”

She fixed her eyes on me. She had amazing eyes with large pupils and deep hazel irises. I remembered one evening in our barfly days when I had probably had one beer too many and just couldn’t stop staring into them while she was spieling away about how difficult it was to buy good seafood locally. Eventually she realised I wasn’t listening, thumped me on the upper arm and mockingly called me a “foolish boy!” She was probably five or six years younger than me but always called me ‘boy’.

Tonight I broke eye contact before falling into that same pit: I nodded down at the chess board and her Sicilian defence, inviting her to do the same.

“As long as you don’t delay my curry…” she said, and then added “…chess boy!”

I see. Well, that hasn’t gone away, then. I was still a boy, apparently.

Boy or man, I’m a pretty serious chess hobbyist. I’ve beaten several folks over at chess clubs in sit-down matches, entered puzzle competitions and have a whole shelf full of books on openings. So I was happy to pay only semi-attention to the game, and watch Izzy chew gently at her bottom lip and tousle strands of her flyaway auburn hair while she tried not to play too badly. She started telling me about her aunt, who had planned to go sky-diving at the age of 75 – Izzy was able to talk incessantly if the occasion demanded it – but when she made a basic defence error, her focus went back to the game. While we were negotiating the midgame, Masood called out that both our orders were nearly ready, and we ended up playing ‘bullet-style’, moving pieces very rapidly and relatively haphazardly so we could get the game finished before our dinner was ready. Eventually, pressure from my passed pawn was too great, and Izzy grinned and – very gently so as not to break any more of Masood’s cheap pieces – tipped over her king.

“You’re too good for me” she said, and tipped back the rest of her beer.

“You’re the only person who’s ever made an effort to play” I reflected idly.

She pondered for a minute: “I think it went wrong after I castled queens’ side.”

“If I can say so, that was a tactical error. It opened up the d-file for me”

“It’s not the only tactical error I’ve made tonight. If I try to walk home with this curry, it’ll be stone cold by the time I get home, and I’ve not left any plates on to warm”

I glanced up at Izzy, although she didn’t make eye contact. In typical idiosyncratic style, she was dressed in a grass-green peasant skirt, a black T-shirt with some elaborate floral design on it, and a blue-denim cut-off jacket which she had (ironically, I guessed) decorated with many badges (sewn and pinned-on) of deeply unfashionable 1980s pop groups. Doing my best to ignore the ‘Go West’ pinned just to the right of her ample bosom, I said:

“You can bring it round to mine if you like. I’ve got the car outside and it’s only five minutes away”

She looked up and made proper eye contact for the first time that evening, her smile broadening and showing the gap between her front teeth:

“Oh, you star! I’d really appreciate it. Thank you!”

I gave her a modest little shrug which I hoped didn’t make me look too nerdy, and she added “I don’t think Masood would be best happy if I opened up my takeaway on the table here…AGAIN”

She flashed her crooked smile at Masood, who beamed back at her. But he also gave her a look that suggested “Yes, takeaway means TAKE AWAY”, although he’d never have dreamed of those words crossing his lips.

Our impromptu dinner arrived all together in one plastic bag about sixty seconds later. I smiled at Izzy – she smiled back – lifted our dinner off the counter, fulsomely thanked Masood and led the way out, crossing over the road to my car with Izzy. The evening was still sunny, but a crisp wind was blowing from the north and I slipped my jacket back on. Just as I hit the remote to unlock the car, Izzy murmured in my ear: “I should have gone to the loo before we left”.

“I’m only five minutes up the Old Road” I said reassuringly.

“Yeah - I’ll be fine” was the curt response.

Five minutes became closer to ten minutes on the way home as I had to tuck into roadside hedges a couple of times to give way to tractors towing trailers of grain. If Izzy was in any discomfort, she didn’t show it, chatting away cheerfully and constantly about the Foo Fighters gig she’d been at last month. Halfway through her off-tune re-enaction of Monkey Wrench, I pulled left onto my front drive, habitually parking close to the hedge on my left. It meant Izzy had to squeeze out of her door slightly and I apologised. She shot back a response at me:

“Come ON! If that drive had taken another five minutes, I’d have to squat in your front hedge. That’s not something you need to see”

What do you say to that, eh? Faced with such a bare-faced confession, my brain went into overdrive, which pretty much shut down my speech circuits. I mumbled something like: “Oh no, I wouldn’t say that”. This promptly earned me a good-natured punch to my upper arm.

“Yeaaaah. Pervy boy”

I wasn’t sure whether this was better or worse than ‘chess boy’. I fumbled with the front door keys in an effort not to embarrass Izzy. She huddled up close to me as did so, and wiggled slightly on the spot, her wide hips bumping against mine once or twice.

The key clicked home, and I ushered Izzy inside. She dropped her handbag behind the door, kicked off her practical open-toed shoes, and shivered as her bare feet hit the cold tiles of the hallway.

“Through there…” I pointed to the door straight ahead. She tottered straight into the bathroom, locking the door immediately. Chuckling to myself, I took the bag of foil takeaway containers into the kitchen and started divvying up the contents. A couple of minutes later, the toilet flushed, and Izzy pattered into the kitchen and peered over my shoulder from behind, her chin resting on the crook of my neck and her boobs pressed into my back.

“I’m famished” she admitted. Let’s get stuck in before it goes cold”

“Another beer with dinner?” I asked. I had another case of the same Cobra lager in the fridge.

“Ohhh, go on then.” She didn’t sound like she needed convincing.

“Small one or large one?” I asked, proffering a 660ml and 330ml bottle from the fridge.

“Small! I don’t think you should be trying to get me drunk!” It was said with a shrug of the shoulders and a grin which positively invited a bit of flirtation.

I popped her a small beer and a large one for myself, and we took a melange of plates, containers, tubs of sauce and rice into the dining room. I found a Foo Fighters album on Spotify and we discussed village gossip over dinner. Was the garage about to launch a takeover for the village shop? Was Brian Dee really about to get planning permission for his barn conversion? And WHO was that strange couple that had been out jogging at 8pm every night last week?

Trust me, living in a small village is more than adequate preparation for running a daytime chat-show.

We both breathed contented sighs upon mopping up the last of the curry sauce and mango chutney and sat back in our chairs.

“I really appreciate the invite” Izzy murmured. “And – look – I’m sorry I had to dash into your loo as soon as I came in. It felt a bit rude”

“Yeah, you’re not going to be allowed to use it again. I limit visitors to one a day, you know!” I deliberately tried to say it with a maximum of fooling about. Of course it was a silly – and not very funny – joke. But Izzy’s eyebrows knitted and she flashed me a more-than-knowing grin.

“PERVY boy!!” She reached over the table and gave me a good whack on my tricep. It carried the weight of a solid farmer’s right arm and hurt a bit. If my senses hadn’t been dulled by a couple of beers and a huge curry, then I’d have winced. But it also clicked my brain into action. Did she…know more than she was letting on? I tried to cast my mind back to those nights we’d spent chatting at the bar up until midnight. We’d talked about relationships – Izzy had had a couple of on/off boyfriends but always struggled to settle. And we’d talked about sex – mostly our varied efforts at failing to do it very well. But had we ever talked about kinks? I didn’t think so, but I wouldn’t swear to it. Maybe Izzy was just very good at reading me with those penetrating hazel eyes. Maybe I just wasn’t very good at making casual jokes about needing the loo. It seemed likely…

I pushed all this out of my head, gathered up the plates and went back out to the kitchen to fill the dishwasher, taking the opportunity to slap a bit of ice-cold water on my face as I did so.

When I got back, Izzy had risen from the table and wandered over to the coffee table nearby. My chess set was on it and a couple of wing-back chairs stood at either end. They were deeply upholstered and probably the most comfortable seats in my house. I often luxuriated in them at the end of the day with my eyes closed for fifteen minutes, almost in meditation.

Izzy was examining the pieces on the chess board while supping the last of her Cobra. I had a much nicer set than Masood’s, although that wasn’t saying much: a classical wooden set of maple and rosewood. Set on the board was a chess puzzle that had been published in the Guardian the day before, and one with which I was struggling to make progress. With a shrug of her shoulders and another broad smile, she nodded towards the table.

“Fancy a rematch?”

“Of course” I responded, as smoothly as I dared. I pulled out one of the wingbacks for her and she plonked herself down, sending her skirt a bit askew. She pulled her knees together and tugged it back to a proper demure posture and started re-setting the pieces.

“Care to make it interesting?” I suggested.

Izzy looked a little sceptically at me for the first time. “What are you suggesting?” she asked.

“Twenty pounds?”

She looked a little bit relieved and flustered at this – perhaps she’d thought I was trying to proposition her or try something unsavoury like ‘strip chess’. But then she also shook her head.

“I can’t afford it. That curry was a weekly treat for me. Losing money over a game is just crazy.

There was a pregnant pause. She looked me speculatively right in the eye. We’d spent a lot of the evening not quite looking at each other directly.

“But…I could drink your beer.” She paused, as if calculating something. “How about…I drink a beer if I lose instead”

I was non-plussed for a bit. “Seems to me like I’d just lose either twenty pounds or one of my beers. There’s not much in that for me”.

She seemed to muster up a little bit of courage to blurt out: “But not if you limit your guests to only one bathroom visit. Like you said, remember?”

There was an undeniable teasing inflection on the end of that question and I knew she was testing me. If I accepted the bet now then she’d know that I’d pay good money just to watch her drink beer and get desperate for a wee. And, the problem was, I also knew damn well that I would! I tried to play it as casually as possible: shook my head and laughed as if Izzy was a bit drunk and crazy.

“Yeah, go on then.” I figured that I was only going to be out a beer or two because Izzy didn’t have enough game to beat me. I took a twenty from my wallet and put it next to the board.

“15 minute blitz OK? I’ll let you play white.”

“Sure” she said, and I started her clock.

Twenty moves later, and it was clear I wasn’t going to lose money. Izzy had missed a backwards bishop capture which left me a rook up. Her little finger was twirling away in that mane of auburn hair, and she was making exaggerated ‘harumphing’ noises of frustration. She clearly knew there was little she could do and a few moves later, she resigned. Without speaking, I went out to the kitchen and popped another small bottle of Cobra for her.

When I came back into the dining room, she was gnawing on her thumb knuckle and glaring at the board as if to hold it personally responsible. I passed her the beer and she downed half of it in one smooth swig.

“OK. That was BEYOND terrible” she confessed. “Let me get my own back”

I wasn’t going to say no. I was enjoying the chess. And enjoying the company even more.

Izzy swivelled the board so she was facing the black pieces. “But, this time, double stakes. Forty pounds against a large Cobra.” She cackled to herself against the sheer stupidity of this bet. But I was more than ready to accept. I pulled out my wallet and laid a second twenty pound note on top of the one that was already on the table.

I tried a Catalan opening (3.g3) on this board. It’s not an opening I’ve really studied, but I thought it’d be fair to give Izzy a chance. By move 15 it was virtually over and by move 16 she’d finished her beer – knocked back in one long slug, followed by an unladylike belch. Much as I enjoy chess, I was ready to suggest watching a film or just giving her a lift home because her chess was starting to get embarrassing. But Izzy was clearly into a tranche of wanting to do better:

“Get my beer. Let’s do it again. I can play better than this! Can you play that opening again?”

I pondered this as I cracked open a large Cobra for her. Where was this going?

“Same stakes? I said, as I passed her the beer. She waved away the pint glass I was also proffering and took a bit slug straight from the bottle.

She sank back in the chair, appreciating for the first time – I think – how comfy it was, and closed her eyes. When she opened them, she surprised me…

“I’m putting myself in an – um – uncomfortable position here. I think you need to double up if I’m going to drink another one of these bad boys.”

As much as I was loving the evening, I was tempted to pull the plug. I didn’t want to distress Izzy or cross a line. But – then – again – she was calling the shots here. Should I just play along?

Pretending to sigh heavily and regret it, I added another two twenties to the table. “Sure? Same opening?” She nodded. I reset the clocks and moved 1.d4.

Izzy surprised me in this game. Leaning over the board in deep concentration, her cheeks buried in her hands, she played a solid and very closed defence. I expended a pawn to get my rooks lined up but couldn’t get a breakthrough, and the game started to go much longer than the ones we had played previously. I couldn’t help but notice that she was down to the dregs of her beer again.

Towards the end of the midgame, she shifted position in her chair, winced slightly and crossed her legs. It didn’t come as any great surprise, but it did cause me to lose a second pawn in a complex multi-piece exchange. I looked up at Izzy and she very briefly arched her eyebrows at me and returned her focus to the board, determined to win.

A few moves later, I managed to break through on an empty file with my active rooks and her king had nowhere to run.

“Oh…come on!” she protested, and I had to sympathise. She’d played a very strong game. And then she bit her bottom lip and shuffled in her chair, rearranging the cushions under her. “I’m not so sure this was a great idea” she said, absently – her mind clearly elsewhere. Then she snapped out of it, recrossed her legs, and ordered me to get her next penalty beer.

I did so more than obligingly, although I noticed her sip at it somewhat more tentatively. She had reset the clock and rotated the board so she was playing white again.

“Look – are you OK?” I asked. “I don’t want this to go too far”

She gave me one of those looks that said ‘we’ve already gone too far’ and said “I’ll manage. I’ve got to early middle age without pissing myself yet. But you ARE going to double down again, right?”

I shook my head at her, mostly trying to disguise my admiration at her sheer force of willpower. I took four more twenties from my rapidly-dwindling wallet and added them to the stack on the table. I started the clock on another half-hour game. They were a pivotal half-hour.

She opened 1.e4 and I replied with a standard Caro-Kann 1….c6. She developed a couple of back-rank pieces, frowned and hunched up in her seat, crossing her ankles tightly. She stayed frozen like that for a few seconds, regained a bit of control over herself and levered her left foot up underneath her, sitting firmly on her bare heel. This had the effect of causing her skirt to draw upwards, revealing her calves – I noticed a few scratches, either cats or brambles I guessed – one knee and a hint of the thigh above. A light scattering of cellulite wrinkles suggested this was more revealing that she was used to and I wrenched my gaze away and back to the board. Despite Izzy’s increasing tipsiness and mounting pressure in her bladder, she wasn’t making many mistakes and I had to negotiate a difficult early kingside attack before castling safely.

With only about five minutes down on each of our clocks, Izzy starting rocking back and forth, still sitting on her heel and making quiet unhappy groaning noises. Doing so caused her skirt to ride up further so pretty much all of her right thigh was available and one particularly hard rock briefly flashed her knickers at me. Nothing sexy: practical cotton hiphuggers in a sort of mustard yellow, but for whatever reason I felt like a naughty schoolboy who’d been caught peeking at the girls. Despite enjoying the situation, I didn’t feel happy about exploiting this.

“Look, I know you’re competitive and all, but I don’t want any accidents on my chairs. Do you want to call it off and take a bathroom break?”

She stared at me hard. I knew she was dying to say yes, and I had no idea what mental and physical processes caused her to chew on her lip, shake her head and retort: “Nuh-huh. We finish. I’ve held out for hours when stuck in the tractor cab on a harvest.”

Yeah, but you weren’t chugging a pint-and-a-bit of beer every half-hour, I thought. But I kept it to myself.

The midgame was long – probably 20 moves of small tactical adjustments, and I tried to play quickly, knowing this must be torture for Izzy. Twice after she’d slapped the clock, she leant forward again and whistled through her teeth.

“This is certainly a new experience” she admitted. But the smile was gone and she said it through clenched teeth. This would almost certainly be our last game. I truly wanted to end it and let Izzy get to the relief she so clearly needed, but she was playing a hugely closed position. I don’t know if she realised that blockading the game was only making things worse for her. Eventually I pushed things through to a pawns-only endgame and realising she was outnumbered, Izzy let her clock run down. Groaning out loud, she unfolded her heel from under her, and let her skirt fall back to modest ankle-length. She hunched forward again, and put her hands flat together between her knees. She SQUEEZED so hard that she shuddered and her face screwed up into a grimace, her eyes shut.

“Call it a night?” I suggested.

She puffed hard and said: “No, one more. Get me a beer”.

I gestured to the coffee table, which was serving as a temporary extension of my wallet. “That’s about all I have. Maybe another 30 quid or so”

“Ah, forget it, cheap boy” Some of the old colour was back in her cheeks. Maybe the need to pee was temporarily fading into the background. There’s only so full a bladder can get, after all. “I’m hardly likely to win it. And I certainly wouldn’t manage another beer after this”

I cracked her open one more beer. When I came back to the dining room, she had reset the board, but gone a bit pale again. Her skirt was around her knees and her left hand tucked underneath, crushed between her thighs. I

“Look, this will have to be a five-minute bullet” she said. “There’s no way I can last more than ten minutes”. I couldn’t disagree. She took a short sip of beer and put the bottle aside. I seriously doubted the bottle was going to get finished so I had a couple of sips myself. There was no objection. Izzy was almost totally preoccupied with her bladder.

Because I’d played white earlier, I took the black pieces again. I’d already decided to play a Petroff defence because I knew it was easy to force quick draws and I was prepared to push the game into a very quick exchange of pieces if Izzy couldn’t cope with even ten minutes. No sooner was 2…Nf6 on the board then I heard a muttered “…sorry” from over the table. Izzy was holding herself again. But this time, the green skirt had been pulled up right to upper-thigh level. Her legs were crossed, thigh muscles visibly taut, and her left hand thrust in between them, pressing hard against the gusset of her knickers. She obviously had very few concerns about what was on view. I lingered over the sight while my clock ticked down a few seconds.

I had no doubt that she had pushed her limits too far. But I also realised that such an overt display was no doubt designed to distract me. With a conscientious effort, I drew my eyes away from her legs – I could feel her eyes part-mocking me and part-resenting the situation she had got herself into and resolved to look at nothing but the board.

Fat chance. Izzy continued to massage herself, almost in a masturbatory gesture, and was starting to emit little ‘ooo’ noises every time she breathed out. She was also playing more quickly. As soon as I made a move then – click, click, slap – she responded and switched the clock. I think she just wanted to get done as soon as possible now.

I didn’t want to put her through any more agony, so I started playing towards a draw. Izzy frantically slapped pieces into place, apparently without any thought after each move. With still 3 minutes on her clock, she suddenly moaned: “ooohhhhhh – grrrrr.” Blushing a deep pink, she muttered “I almost lost it then”. I assumed she was talking about her self-control rather than the game.

Izzy’s ultra-rapid style didn’t seem to have any focus, and I let myself glance at her. She still had her hand crushed tight against her knickers, all of her lower half on full view. But she was staring intently at the board. I moved my a-pawn forward.

Click, click – Izzy put a knight in a sacrifice position. I took it, putting nearly all my pawns on dark squares. Then she shifted her other knight to a square where it threatened my queen. I was forced to trade it off for my white bishop. Five moves later, Izzy sacrificed a rook. I took it quickly – I was below a minute of time on my clock. And then, barely thinking about it, and with a big, frustrated sigh, she nudged her d pawn forward.

I could see what was going to happen. Her other rook would threaten my queen and I’d have to take it. My queen would then be skewered by her white bishop which had all the mobility on the board since the first knight sacrifice. I pondered where the defence to this was, but in my heart I knew there wasn’t one. And I let my clock tick down to zero.

Izzy leapt up, grabbed the pile of money from the table and barked “Take me home!”. It wasn’t a polite request, it was a direct order. By the time I’d pulled my gaze away from the end position, she’d shuffled out to the hall, slipped on her shoes, retrieved her handbag (now with £160 tucked inside), and was standing impatiently, her modesty restored. But I could see her ankles firmly locked together and a steady continual bounce in her knees.

“Look, you can use the loo. I don’t mind.”

“Nope. A bet’s a bet. I don’t win if I don’t follow the rules.”

Crazy.

I unlocked the front door and escorted her down the front path. She was so full that she couldn’t walk upright and bent over nearly double, taking mincing little steps. There was a very quiet, low-level growl at the back of her throat as she grappled for control. She grabbed hold of my elbow for support – one loose step, one stumble in the gathering twilight and I’m sure it would have been all over. I hoped she wouldn’t pee all over the inside of my car. I wouldn’t have minded if that happened, but explaining it to the car valet service would be tricky.

I clicked the remote and the car unlocked. I made an after you gesture, but Izzy just stayed next to me, still clinging to my elbow.

“Ah….mmm….ffffff….no…no” was the best she could produce. Game over, I thought.

Izzy backed towards my car as if to sit on the bonnet. Already, she was tugging at the sides of her skirt now, lifting the hem higher over her scratched calves, her knees, and finally her thighs, until the gentle curve of her belly was visible. Thumbs hooked inside her knickers, she slid them down without hesitation, without even urging me to look away. They slipped over her round hips, revealing a reddish-brown bush that had occasionally been neatly trimmed but probably not for a couple of weeks. She shoved her knickers down to knee level. She planted her feet firmly apart, bent her knees slightly, and tilted her hips just far back enough to clear her underwear. And then she finally let go of all that beer.

It hissed loudly as it came out of her, and then splattered on the tarmac of my driveway. I tried to look down, involuntarily my base instincts trying get a glimpse of the stream, but I was at the wrong angle. Because Izzy was virtually standing up I saw her face instead. Her eyes were screwed closed, trying to block out the reality of what she was doing, and her lips were open in a perfect O. If you’d asked all the world’s best actresses to portray sheer relief, they could have done it better than this. Even as I looked at her face, she let out a huge sigh, exhaling all the breath from her body: it looked as if she actually shrunk a little. The sigh finished in a shudder, her cheeks flapping back and forth and her shoulders shaking. I wanted to give a sympathy hug, but I didn’t see how that was possible.

The stream wasn’t as urgent and powerful, but Izzy still peed. As she did, she sank lower and lower, sitting back against the radiator of my car for support, and eventually wrapping one hand around my knee. The other held her skirt, bunched up well above her waist, the folds of her belly and legs all converging around her mound and untidy bush. There may have been a glimpse of labia but to be honest I wasn’t at the right angle to see it – such are the frustrations of watching ladies pee.

And, have no doubt, she was still peeing. The hissing wasn’t apparent any more, but the puddle on my driveway continued to slosh, grow and trickle into multiple rivulets. My knees buckled involuntarily and I sunk down into a crouch to hold her hands. Her eyes snapped open.

“Get off, silly boy. I’m trying to take a leak here!”

Normal service had been resumed. With a brief glance at the stream still trickling from between her legs, I straightened back up. She continued to hold onto my knee for balance, though.

The last ebbs of pee trickled under the hedge, and she was done. It seemed she’d been squatting there at least a couple of minutes. She levered herself up on the car, letting her skirt fall down around her, making her decent once more. She hitched the hem to pull up her knickers, then hesitated, wiggled her knees a little and let them fall down to ground level in the puddle. Tutting, she stepped out of the leg-holes, picked them up and tucked them in a side-pocket of her handbag. Then she turned to get in the car giving me a ‘so what are you standing there looking at?’ type of shrug. I got in the car.

We sat there in silence for at least a minute. We were both breathing far more heavily than the occasion warranted and the windscreen started to mist. I couldn’t bring myself to even look at her, and I’m sure she must have felt the same. We stared forward into the increasing gloom, trying to work out what lines had been crossed and whether there was any reconciling what had happened tonight.

Eventually, Izzy broke the silence.

“Rook to d1 is the only answer”

My brain was fogged with images of her desperation, her dimpled thighs, and her unsexy yellow knickers. “You what?” was all that I can manage.

“The puzzle that you had set up on the board at the beginning of the evening. Moving the rook is the only way to release your bishop and prevent black forcing a stalemate”

“I’ve been hustled, haven’t I?”

“Yup. Played for UK Girls twenty years ago. Lost interest when I went to Uni.”

“Reckon I still got my money’s worth though”

We said all this in blank monotones, still staring forward and unsure about making eye contact, without any cheerfulness or regret. It was a bit like a Harold Pinter play.

But my last comment probably broke the awkwardness.

“You…NAUGHTY boy!”. I landed a – well-earned – punch on the upper arm. I turned to look at Izzy and she was beaming from ear to ear. She leaned in and gave me a lingering kiss on the lips, her mouth parted ever so slightly.

“Take me home, naughty boy”

As we drove, the chatter returned in dribs and drabs. We talked of wild swimming, National Hunt racing and how many chocolate buttons the Cadbury’s factor could make in an hour. I admit, I struggled to make sensible conversation for a while, but Izzy chattered away and covered up the manifest awkwardness on my part.

I didn’t bother parking as I got to the barn where she lived, I just abandoned the car in the middle of the sizable farmyard and got out to say goodnight. She moved in for a big hug, and stood on tiptoes to kiss me again. This was a longer, chewier kiss, eyes shut and pressed firmly against each other. She slid her hands inside my coat to stop them getting cold, and I moved mine from the back of her neck, through her flyaway hair and down to her hips. She guided me towards a hidden slit in the skirt that I could reach through and caress a bare buttock. Secretive, sexy, and deeply personal. But, then, hadn’t that been our whole evening?

Finally, she drew away. Her grin – often a rictus of mock and sarcasm – was much warmer, more relaxed than I had ever seen it.

“We should definitely play again” she said.

“Tomorrow?” I suggested optimistically.

“Oh. You….FOOLISH BOY!” She cuffed me on the arm, uncharacteristically giggled, and went inside.