CHAPTER ONE
Somewhere around the time she started calling herself “Chess,” I realized I might actually hate my best friend.
It was the third name she’d given herself in the nearly twenty years I’d known her. When we’d met in fourth grade, she was just Jessica. Well, “Jessica C.,” since there was also “Jessica M.,” and “Jessica R.,” and then one girl who just got to be Jessica, like she’d claimed the name first, and everyone else just had to fucking deal with it. So I guess it wasn’t a surprise that by the time we were sophomores, Jessica C. had turned herself into “JC,” which eventually morphed into “Jaycee.”
That lasted until halfway through college. Sometime between her third and fourth change of major, she became simply, “Jay,” holding on to that moniker until ten years ago, right after we both turned twenty-five and she’d finally broken up with that asshole, Lyle. That’s when Chess was born.
Chess Chandler.
I can’t deny that it sounds good, and it definitely looks good printed in giant font on the book I’m currently holding in my lap as I wait for Chess to meet me for lunch.
She’s late, because she’s always late, even though I’d purposely shown up fifteen minutes after I’d told her to meet me, hoping to avoid this very situation. But of course, just as I sat down, I’d gotten a text from her. Leaving now!
So I was on my second iced tea, and my third piece of bread at this little café in Asheville, the kind of place I’d thought Jessica—Chess—would like, waiting for the real Chess while the picture of her splashed across her book cover beamed back at me.
She’s sitting on the floor in the photo, wearing a white shirt and jeans, her feet bare, her toenails painted a bright melon, pose casual and smile bright under the title You Got This!
That’s her thing: the self-help beat. She sort of fell into it when a friend of ours from college, Stefanie, started a website, some kind of women and wellness thing that I can’t even remember the name of. Chess started out doing a little advice feature for the site, and one of her answers, encouraging a woman to break up with her shitty boyfriend and leave her shitty job, went viral.
I understood why. The response was classic Chess: breezy and funny, but also getting to the heart of the matter in a way that was blunt without being cruel. You know what you have to do here—I mean, you wrote to me, you’re obviously smart (except where it comes to guys. And jobs. But we can fix that).
I’d been getting pep talks like this from her for years, after all. Still, I thought the biggest it would get was a BuzzFeed article called “Twenty-seven Reasons We Want to Make This Advice Columnist Our Bestie!!”
But somehow, it just kept growing. Suddenly, her Insta- gram had thousands, then hundreds of thousands of followers. She stopped writing for Stefanie’s site and took a job at Salon, then the Cut, and then there was a book deal. Things My Mama Never Taught Me hit every bestseller list there is, and before I knew it, Chess was famous.
And honestly, she deserved to be. She was good at this stuff. I’ve read all her books and watched all her videos, including her big TED Talk that has something like twenty million views on YouTube. I’ve also spent a lot of time wondering how someone you once played Barbies with can now be talking to Oprah—at Oprah’s damn house, no less—telling women how to get their lives on the “Powered Path.”
I tear off another hunk of bread.
My life is most definitely not on the Powered Path these days, and if I’m honest, that might be part of the reason I don’t like Chess that much anymore.
Well, that and the fact that she’s now—I check my phone—thirty minutes late.
Just when I’m starting to think I should go ahead and order, the door of the café opens, and she breezes in, tall and very blond, a whirlwind in shades of white, one hand already lifted in greeting as she shoves her giant sunglasses on top of her head, a pearl-gray leather bag slung over one shoulder. She’s always like this, perpetually in motion, her body seeming to move in ten directions at once, but every gesture somehow graceful, fluid.
Heads turn when she enters, but I can’t tell if that’s because people recognize her or if it’s just her—that energy, that glow.
I stand up too fast to hug her, my thighs hitting the edge of the table, ice rattling in the water glasses, and then I’m enveloped in a cloud of Jo Malone perfume.
“Emmmm,” Chess says, hugging me tight.
And even though I was thoroughly irritated with her just a few seconds ago, I instantly feel that familiar warmth in my chest. She’s the only person who ever calls me “Em.” I’ve been Emily to everyone my entire life except her, and hearing it drawled in that low-country accent she’s never lost brings back all the good memories—the years of slumber parties, driving in her car with the windows down, scream-singing with the radio, sitting on her couch at her beach house on Kiawah Island, giggling over glasses of white wine. A million things that immediately outweigh her perpetual lateness and make me feel guilty for ever thinking anything bad about her.
As she pulls back, Chess studies me, putting one cool palm against my cheek. “You look better,” she says, and I manage a smile, patting her hand before returning to my seat.
“I feel better,” I tell her as I sit down. “Mostly.”
I brace myself for more questions, and given how sick I’ve gotten of talking about my health over the past year, I’m already formulating a way to brush her off, but then Chess spots her book on the table, and gives a pealing laugh.
“Oh my god, did you bring that for me to sign?”
Her green eyes are bright as she sinks into her chair, slinging her bag over the back. “I would’ve sent you one, you know.”
It’s stupid to feel embarrassed around someone who has held your hair back while you puke, on multiple occasions, but my face goes a little hot as I wave at the book.
“It’s my mom’s,” I tell her. “I made the mistake of telling her I was seeing you today, and the next thing I know, this is in my mailbox with a Post-it.”
Get Jessica to sign this, please! She can make it out to me. (Deborah.)
Chess snorts now as she picks up the book. “Classic Deb,” she says, and then once again, she performs one of those magic acts of hers—pulling a pen out of that enormous bag, signing the book, signaling to the waiter, ordering a glass of wine, all as she scrawls her signature across the title page.
Sometimes I feel tired just watching her.
Handing the book to me, Chess leans back in her chair and pushes her hair away from her face.
She looks different these days, thinner and blonder, but I can still see the girl I met the first day of fourth grade at Johnson Elementary, just outside of Asheville. The girl with a splash of freckles across her nose, big eyes and wide cheekbones, who’d leaned forward and conspiratorially whispered, “I’m glad I’m sitting next to you.”
It’s funny how such a little thing can form a lifelong bond.
“So, how’s your writing going?” she asks as the waiter brings her wine. I’m sticking with iced tea, still on a handful of medications that I don’t want to mix with alcohol, and take a sip before answering her.