the way we call each other baby

The lecture dragged on endlessly, like an old record skipping on the same note. The professor, a wizened little man with glasses slipping down to the tip of his nose, droned on about Hegelian dialectics, but the meaning of his words passed straight through Noah without catching, like water through a sieve. It left behind only scattered fragments of sentences that immediately drowned in the whirlpool of entirely different thoughts. Outside the lecture hall window, the wind chased the first fallen leaves across the inner courtyard, and their chaotic, disorderly dance reminded him of what was happening inside his own soul right now—where the usual order of things had suddenly swayed and begun to crack, even though on the outside everything remained the same and unshakable. He flipped a page in his notebook, only half-filled. His handwriting jumped and stumbled, betraying his distraction. And then he caught himself drawing a tiny guitar in the margins, and next to it, someone's profile outlined in a few light strokes: high cheekbones, curls falling to the chin. Noah blinked, staring at the drawing as if it had appeared on the paper on its own, without his doing, and hastily slammed the notebook shut. He felt warmth rising to his cheeks—whether from embarrassment or from something else he couldn't yet name, something that had been living somewhere under his ribs for weeks now, quietly scratching away, giving him no peace. "This is just a habit," he told himself, shoving the notebook into his backpack and trying to think about something else. "We spend too much time together, that's all. It's natural to think about the person you share an apartment, breakfasts, and evenings with. It doesn't mean anything." But his inner voice, the one that never lies, sounded from somewhere deep inside and said just one word, a word that made Noah's fingers go cold: "It does." He sat through the rest of his classes in a fog. When he finally stepped out of the university building into the fresh air, dusk was already falling. The sky over Manhattan was staining itself in those particular lilac-pink tones that only happen in early autumn, when the sun sets early and the air smells of decaying leaves, gasoline, and fresh bread from the bakery on the corner. He pulled up the hood of his sweatshirt—the one Finn had stolen last week and then returned, smelling of his cologne—and started walking toward the subway. He was debating whether to stop at the supermarket for dinner or just order something in, when his phone buzzed in his pocket. It was Mark. Noah glanced at the screen and hesitated for a second before taking the call. Every conversation with Mark lately left a strange aftertaste. Not a bad one—no, Mark was wonderful, attentive, and considerate, being with him was easy and simple. But that very easiness, for some reason, felt unnatural to Noah, like a suit tailored to someone else's measurements. He shook his head, chasing away the inappropriate comparisons, and swiped his finger across the screen. — Hey, — Mark's voice sounded chipper and a little excited. In the background, music was already playing, muffled, with a heavy bass that vibrated through the speaker. — So listen, Lisa's having this spontaneous thing at her place tonight. She says a ton of people are coming. I was thinking—maybe you'd want to come? We haven't all gotten together properly in ages, and it's a good excuse. Noah leaned his shoulder against a lamppost, watching the stream of cars rushing past, and closed his eyes for a second, weighing his options. Finn was waiting at home. They hadn't explicitly agreed on it, but there was an unspoken rule between them: Friday nights, if neither of them had other plans, they spent together. And that rule was very rarely broken, because neither of them actually wanted to break it. But tonight was different. Tonight, that strange, gnawing feeling was sitting inside him, the one he wanted to run away from—to lose himself in a crowd, to drown it out with loud music and other people's conversations, so he wouldn't have to be alone with it in the silence of their apartment, where every glance and every touch from Finn echoed inside him with a resonance whose meaning he was afraid to decode. — Okay, — he said, and his own voice sounded foreign to him. — Yeah, let's do it. Text me the address. I'll swing by home to change and then head over. — Awesome! — Mark was clearly happy, and at that, Noah felt a stab of guilt, because he knew: he wasn't going to Mark, he was running from himself. — Alright, I'll be waiting. See you soon. Noah ended the call and stood motionless for a few more moments, staring at the darkening screen. Then he walked resolutely toward the subway, trying to convince himself that a party was exactly what he needed right now. But inside, everything clenched at the thought that Finn would be waiting for him at home—and waiting in vain. The apartment greeted him with silence and the smell of coffee. That meant Finn was already back and, as always, had brewed a fresh batch. Noah kicked off his sneakers in the hallway and walked into the living room. There, on the coffee table, next to scattered guitar picks and an open book, sat a mug of still-hot coffee. And next to it, a note written in a slightly careless handwriting that Noah would have recognized out of a thousand: Went to take a shower. Be out soon. You hungry? He stood over that note, turning it over in his fingers, and felt the gnawing feeling inside him grow stronger, spreading through his chest in a warm, viscous wave that made it hard to breathe. He thought that no party, no loud music, and no person in the world could ever make him feel the same thing that a simple note from Finn, scrawled on a scrap of notebook paper, made him feel. And that realization was even more terrifying, because it meant it wasn't about habit, or shared living, or long years of friendship. It was about something much deeper and more inevitable, something he wasn't yet ready to open his soul to. The sound of water came from the bathroom. Noah took a deep breath and went to his room to change. He pulled a dark shirt out of his closet—the one he usually wore for going out—and a cleaner pair of jeans. He was just buttoning it up when the bathroom door clicked open and footsteps sounded in the hallway—light, barefoot. Then Finn's voice, slightly muffled by the towel he was obviously using to dry his hair: — Baby, you home? I was thinking, maybe we could order Chinese and watch that movie I was telling you about? I don't really have plans for tonight, and I... He appeared in the doorway of Noah's bedroom with the towel on his shoulders, in a stretched-out t-shirt, his damp curls coiling even tighter than usual and sticking to his temples. He stopped mid-sentence because he saw Noah standing in front of the mirror in his going-out shirt, and he understood everything without a word. His face flickered for a split second—just long enough for Noah, with his insane attention to detail, to catch it—and then it returned to its usual, slightly lazy expression. — Ah, you're going somewhere, — Finn said. It wasn't a question, just a statement of fact. His voice sounded even, like a guitar string pulled to its limit. — Got it. Mark? — Yeah, — Noah answered, looking away and pretending to fix his collar, even though it was already lying perfectly. — His friend's having a party. He invited me. I won't be long, probably. — Of course, — Finn nodded and smiled with the corners of his lips, but the smile came out humorless. Noah physically felt something cold and prickly spring up between them, right in that space that had always been filled with warmth and understanding, something that had never been there before. — Have fun. You deserve it. He turned and walked back into the living room. A second later, the soft ring of a guitar string drifted out—Finn had brushed against it on his way past. The sound hung in the air, lonely and sad, just like that morning. And Noah suddenly wanted to rip off that stupid shirt, stay home, order Chinese food, and watch that movie, pressed shoulder-to-shoulder with Finn the way they'd done a hundred times before. But instead, he grabbed his wallet from the nightstand, shoved it into his pocket, and, passing through the living room toward the door, tossed over his shoulder, trying to keep his voice carefree: — I'll be quick. Don't get too bored without me, baby. Finn, sitting on the windowsill with his guitar in his hands—in the same pose the morning had started with—looked up at him. In the chocolate depths of his eyes, something flickered that squeezed the air right out of Noah's lungs. But the answer came out light, almost teasing: — In your dreams. Who's gonna be bored? And when the front door clicked shut behind Noah and his footsteps faded on the stairs, Finn lowered the guitar, set it aside, and sat motionless for a long time, staring out the window. He thought about how the evening he had imagined so differently would now consist of silence, cold coffee, and a strange, hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. Somewhere on the other side of the city, in a smoke-filled loft with dim lights and blaring music, Noah stood with a glass in his hand, listening to Mark tell some funny story. He caught himself smiling at all the wrong moments. His thoughts had stayed back there, on the seventh floor of that brick building, where a dark-haired musician sat alone on a windowsill, plucking the strings and playing a melody no one had heard yet—a melody that one day, perhaps, would tell everything that words couldn't say yet. By the time Noah had drained his third, maybe fourth glass, the party had turned into a blur of flashing lights, the drone of voices, and basslines that punched him right in the chest, making his heart pound in some unnatural, broken rhythm. He didn't remember how long it had been since he'd crossed the threshold of this loft, reeking of cigarette smoke and strangers' perfume. He didn't remember whose hands he'd shaken or whose glasses he'd clinked. He didn't even remember where Mark had gone—Mark, who half an hour ago had been standing right beside him, hand on his shoulder, whispering something in his ear that had made Noah smile, genuinely, for real. Because being with Mark was good. It was calm. It was warm. And Noah was really starting to believe that this could grow into something serious, something worth waking up for in the morning and moving forward toward. And now Mark had vanished, dissolved into the crowd. Noah, stumbling, headed toward the hallway where he vaguely remembered there being a bathroom. He just needed to wash his face, pull himself together, take a few gulps of cold water so the world would stop spinning before his eyes like a carousel he couldn't get off. He pushed open the first door at the end of the hallway—it was unlocked—and what he saw slammed into his foggy consciousness with such merciless, sobering clarity that all his drunkenness retreated for a moment, leaving behind only an icy, ringing emptiness where there was no room for anything but pain. In the dim light of a single bulb, Mark—his Mark, the same Mark who just yesterday had kissed his forehead and told him how lucky he was to have found someone like Noah—was standing there, pressing some stranger against the tiled wall. His fingers were tangled in the guy's hair, his whole body pushing into him with that raw, animal passion Noah had never seen in his eyes when he looked at him. They didn't notice him—they were too consumed with each other, breathing too loudly, their lips too hungrily devouring someone else's skin. Noah stumbled backward, closing the door as silently as he'd opened it. He stood in the hallway for several more seconds, leaning his back against the cold wall, feeling something inside him collapse—slowly, inexorably, like a house of cards blown on too hard. He was in pain. Not just offended or upset—but truly in pain, the kind that comes when you lose something you genuinely believed in. He'd liked Mark, damn it, he'd really liked him—for his stability, his calmness, the way he knew how to listen, the way he never pressured, never demanded more than Noah was ready to give. He'd seemed solid, real, the kind of person you could build a future with. And Noah, stupid, trusting Noah, had already started to imagine that future: how they'd meet up in the evenings after his classes, how Mark would get to know Chloe, how maybe, one day, they might even move in together. Though that last thought always stirred a strange, inexplicable chill somewhere under his skin, one Noah preferred to ignore. And now it was all crumbling to dust in a single moment. The worst part was, he couldn't even get properly angry. He just stood there, pressing his forehead against the cold wall, feeling tears roll down his cheeks—tears he wasn't ashamed of, because he had every right to them. He wasn't crying because Mark had turned out to be a cheater. He was crying because he'd gotten it wrong again, mistaken someone else's affection for something more, let himself hope. And that hope had just been smashed to pieces against the tiled wall of a stranger's bathroom. He didn't remember how he got out of the loft. Fragments—the stairs, the cold night air slapping his face, the hum of traffic somewhere below, streetlights blurring into hazy smears through the veil of tears and alcohol. He stood on the sidewalk, leaning against a cast-iron railing, fumbling with trembling fingers in his pocket for his phone. Through the fog and the pain, one single thought pulsed in his head, simple and clear: "I don't want to be alone right now. Please, just not alone." And of all the contacts, of all the people in this huge, indifferent city, his finger, of its own accord, pressed the one without a photo, labeled simply "Finn." Because there was no one else. Because he was the only one you could call at three in the morning, drunk, shattered, and miserable, and know he wouldn't ask unnecessary questions, wouldn't judge, would just come and be there, the way he'd always been. The rings stretched on forever. With each one, the panic grew—what if he doesn't answer, what if he's asleep and can't hear, what if he's mad about that stupid evening and doesn't want to talk—but on the fifth ring, a click sounded in the earpiece, and Finn's voice, sleepy, a little hoarse, but filled with instant alarm, spoke: — Noah? Baby, what's going on? What happened? And at the sound of that voice, at that familiar, homelike "baby," at that instant, reproach-free worry ringing in every syllable, Noah suddenly felt everything he'd been holding back all evening—the pain, the humiliation, the drunken nausea, and the bitter, burning loneliness—rise to his throat in one hot, unbearable lump. He closed his eyes, pressed his forehead to the cold metal of the railing, and breathed into the phone just two words, into which he poured everything he couldn't say sober: — Come get me. Please.