Nick and Noah by Enana Jacob

This had nothing to do with you. I want you to know that.

Ben had just come home from military school. His skin was bronzed and his hair was cropped and he seemed to have gotten even taller. We had never looked more different from each other than in that moment, the moment he walked in, shining and toned like a returning hero, like he’d already gone to war and come home victorious. After he settled in, my dad played him that old song you liked, asked him if he remembered it, since it was their song. Ben said yes in a way that made it seem like he was annoyed, embarrassed even, that Dad had played it. But I knew he felt all special; nostalgic for a time that hadn’t even left him yet. I wonder if he remembered that it used to be my song with Dad, not his. I wonder if my dad knew, either. I’m not sure how it ever got swapped. I didn’t say anything.

I watched them in the living room—Ben and my mom and dad—with a white cross above them on the mantelpiece, a military uniform peaking out of my brother’s bag, my dad’s old baseball bat in the corner. It could’ve been an advertisement, a movie set. The great and terrible American family, a picture of suburbia, and me watching from just beyond the threshold. They didn’t seem to notice when I left.

Before dinner I went to the bathroom just to stare at the walls, just to be in a room no one would enter, no one would expect anything of me in. The house was quiet but felt so loud, like buzzing static, and I needed to do nothing, be nothing, hear nothing. After a while I flushed the empty toilet and turned on the sink. I washed my hands and let the water run, keep running, keep making that shushing sound and I don’t know how long it took me to realize the water had gone scalding. I let my hands go pink, let the burning feeling settle in a little longer, and then I shut off the water and I left.

My dad was calling for me. Nick, he said, go get your brother. Dinner is ready and your mother worked very hard. I went to Ben’s room and told him to come down for dinner. His headphones were on but I didn’t speak up. I didn’t think he heard me or even saw me walk in but I left anyway.

My dad drank whiskey that night and I was worried he’d notice that it was watered down. I told you we should’ve been more careful when we did that and was so mad when you weren’t, but he didn’t notice in the end, anyway. Noah, I’d said. That’s enough, Noah. I don’t want to get caught, Noah, stop it. I said your name a lot when I drank. I liked how it felt, how it tasted. I remember when you said Nick and Noah sounded like a sitcom. Then after some alcohol you changed your mind and said it sounded like a romcom, and you laughed, and I was furious, and I wasn’t furious at all, and the room was spinning and I didn’t think it was just because of the burn in my throat, the lightness in my head. Nick and Noah, I said, Nick and Noah Noah Noah.

After dinner, Ben came to my room and showed me pictures of his new girlfriend. She’s so fucking hot, right? And I said yeah, she’s beautiful, and he smacked me on the arm. Dude, he said, I’m not gonna be mad at you if you say she’s hot. Fucking look at her, man. She’s a killer. I looked past the photo to my wall. The paint was chipped, right by the door frame, and you could see the old color peaking through. Yeah, I said. She’s a fucking killer.

I don’t know why I’m telling you all of this, Noah, I don’t. But around 3AM when I still couldn’t sleep I thought I might vomit. I didn’t feel nauseous, not in a way that counted, but everything in me was churning and I wanted it to stop, I wanted it to be over, I wanted to get it out of me and maybe I had to throw it all up. I went to the bathroom and leaned my head over the toilet. I gagged a few times, hoping nausea would swell over me, but it didn’t. I let the spit collect in my mouth. My hair slipped in front of my face and caught some of my saliva as I spat into the water below me. I wished for a second you were there to hold my hair back for me and then I stuck two fingers down my throat and threw up.

Ben was still awake, texting his girlfriend, and he heard me vomit but didn’t check up on me. I know this because the next morning my mom was in my room telling me she wasn’t letting me go to school, since Ben said I was sick. I told her I was fine and that I should go. She said absolutely not, Nick, and I said I have a big exam I can’t miss. I didn’t really have one. But I didn’t want you to think I wasn’t at school because of you. It had nothing to do with you. My mom petted my hair and said okay, if you’re sure. But come home if you change your mind. I think she thought I was nervous for my made-up exam, that that was why I threw up. I let her think it because it’s not like I had an answer that made any more sense than that.

You and I still sat together in Algebra. There weren’t assigned seats but everyone stayed put where they were, where they had been all year. Both of us, unspoken, didn’t want to displace anyone and so we sat where we always had: together. Maybe there was some other reason we stayed, too. You had a bruise on your arm, purple and stormy. I wanted to touch it but I clicked my pen instead, off and on and off again.

The way we sat, the way our desks leaned on each other’s, put us closer together than we had been in your room that night. That would’ve made me laugh, if I were someone else. Maybe someday I’ll find it funny. Your father had already been drunk, already out of it when we got there, but still you seemed surprised when he came into your room, eyes bleary and wet, limbs swinging in an unpracticed, ragdoll sort of way. We hadn’t done anything wrong. We hadn’t done anything at all, except be in his way. He stumbled in, pointing with a bottle of beer, telling us to fuck off, get the fuck out of my house, you fucking idiot leech sons of bitches. He raised the bottle and you flinched and he called us fucking idiot queers and hit the q and the r so hard they could shatter, and I would’ve laughed if I were someone else, we hadn’t even done anything, it was so absurd, so undirected and meaningless and empty and incredible, we hadn’t even done anything, not yet, anyway, and he smashed the bottle down like a gavel, ruling us on the spot, ruling us guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty, guilty.

You did laugh about it, later. Sorry, you said, my dad’s crazy, you know how he is. Sorry you had to see him like that, and you pulled your sleeve down to cover another bruise, and you laughed like any of it was funny. I went to pull your sleeve back up to see how bad it was but I ended up grabbing your hand instead. I don’t know why. And you looked at me, and I watched your eyes and tried to understand them. They swirl, you know, like a weather map, whenever you’re upset.

Ben wasn’t home when I got back from school. He was hanging out with a friend from high school, one of the ones that probably used to buy him cigarettes and refer to me as Ben’s weird little brother. All of this meant that I ate dinner with my parents without his presence to distract them from me, and so I had to tell them about my fake exam and pretend not to think too hard about Algebra class, about sticking together, about your arm and its shifting kaleidoscope of bruises. Baseball, you’d say, it’s all just from baseball. It’s the only reason you kept playing. To have a reason for injury, to have a reason to stay out of the house. To have a reason to stretch your arms around mine and teach me how to swing. Like this, no, no, put your hand here. Here. Here. Like that. Faster. That’s it. Faster. Here. Here. Here.

My dad drank whiskey again that night. I kept waiting for him to notice that it was paler than usual. I watched his mouth print on the glass and remembered that once, you put your lips to the bottle and drank and that some of your spit must still be on there and now my dad has tasted your spit. And I hate him for it. I hate everyone for it. I hate everyone for everything and no, Noah, none of it has anything, anything, to do with you. Not everything is about you, or this, and there is no this. There is no this.

How was the exam, my mom said.

It was fine, I said. I don’t know. She asked me if it was in Algebra, if I thought I could still bring my grade up. If it had been, you would’ve let me cheat off of you. Just a little bit, just enough so that I could pass.

No, it was for History. Civil War and stuff.

If you had let me cheat, then you would’ve made me pay you back by helping you learn Spanish vocab. Just like you did last time.

Oh, see, you’re good at history. I’m sure you did well, she said.

You kept plucking the flashcards from my hands. Do you remember?

Yeah, it was fine I guess. Not too hard.

Desear, to wish. Abrazar, to embrace.

Are you feeling better, Nick? Still sick at all?

Tener, to have. Querer, to want.

I don’t know, Mom. I’m tired.

You said if you acted the words out, maybe you’d remember them better. Tocar, to touch. You touched my hand.

Nick, honey, you look sick. Why don’t you get to bed.

I dropped the flashcards, Noah, but you already know that.

Yeah, okay. I’m going to go to bed.

It all happened so quick, like it was inevitable, like it was the follow through to a swing.

Okay, honey.

Your hand on my chest.

I went upstairs to the bathroom again. Leaned my head over the toilet.

Your hand on my back.

I let the spit pool, pushed my hair out of the way.

Your hand on my face. On my neck. In my hair.

The tears fell before the spit could. Wet and heavy and endless.

Your lips on my lips.

I sat on the floor, knees to my chest, arms wrapped tight enough to split myself in half. 

Your lips, on my lips.

I cried until I didn’t think I was breathing anymore. Until I didn’t feel the tiles below me anymore. You terrify me, Noah. You make me terrified of myself. 

Querer, to want, to want, to want.

And you still haven’t talked to me, not since then. Maybe it scared you too. Maybe it didn’t. Maybe you want nothing to do with me.

I covered my eyes with my hands, pressure to the wound. I pushed so hard to stop the tears that it hurt. I was afraid my eyes would pop and I’d end up in the hospital without a way to explain it and then I wondered if I was in the hospital, would you come visit me?

I pushed harder. Would you have visited me? The tears kept coming. I thought I would drown. I don’t know how long I stayed like that. I don’t know if I’ve even left yet.

And I don’t know, Noah. I don’t know. Maybe this did have something to do with you.

Enana Jacob is a Chicago-based Syrian American writer. Her work has appeared in LOGOS Art and Literature Journal, where she was formerly Editor-in-Chief, Blood+Honey, and Mistake House Magazine, where she won the Issue 10 Editor’s Choice for Fiction. Enana is a graduate of the Yale Summer Writers’ Workshop and New York State Summer Writers Institute. Her play A Little Grace premiered in 2025 in Rochester, NY. She is a graduate of the University of Rochester, where she won the Dean’s Prize for Creative Writing in Drama.