Stranded in an Empty Hall With My Injured Roommate, I Slipped and Took His Towel With Me novel · Chapter 1 of 24
Chapter 1: The Towel
Stranded in an emptied hall with his injured roommate, Noah helps Damian toward the shower, slips on the junk food on the floor and pulls Damian's towel off, and finds Damian hard and looking straight down at him.
Noah Curnow had walked all the way to the library to return one book, just so he wouldn't have to look at his roommate.
It didn't work.
When he opened the door to room 14, Damian was still lying on his bed in nothing but a pair of black trunks.
The sheet had slid off him while Noah was gone.
It hung off the end of the mattress, touching the floor.
Damian Whelan was asleep on his back with one arm over his eyes.
His right ankle was strapped in a fat white bandage and propped on a pillow.
The rest of him was bare.
The room smelled like the football final. Grass, sweat, deep heat.
It was forty-one degrees outside, and the ceiling fan just pushed the hot air in circles.
Noah stood in the doorway and didn't move.
Kurrajong Hall had two hundred people in it on Friday.
On Monday it had two.
Everyone else went home on Sunday, the day the hall closed for summer.
Noah's coach to the coast left at 7:15 on Sunday morning.
He was asleep when it left.
By noon a bushfire had shut the highway east of town.
Then it shut the rail line.
Then the smoke shut the airport.
The coach company said the next run was Sunday, a week away.
Damian's flight to Perth was cancelled, and he couldn't drive on that ankle anyway.
The warden had looked at the two of them at the front desk on Sunday morning and sighed.
Then he handed Noah his key ring and drove north to his daughter's.
So it was Noah and Damian, and nobody else for a week.
They had shared this room since February.
In nine months they'd said maybe a hundred words to each other.
Damian was the captain of the hall football team.
Noah was the guy who worked the library desk and went to bed at ten.
He closed the door very quietly.
There was rubbish all over the floor on Damian's side.
Chip packets. Empty cans. A torn sleeve of Tim Tams.
A plastic bag lay on its side by the bed with GET WELL SOON SKIP written on it in black marker.
The team had left it for Damian on Saturday night.
He'd been eating out of it on the floor ever since, because he couldn't reach the shelf.
Noah stepped around it and sat down on his own bed.
He opened his laptop.
He looked at the screen.
He looked at Damian.
A drop of sweat ran down Damian's stomach and into the waistband of his trunks.
Noah looked back at the screen.
"You're back."
The voice made him jump.
Damian had moved his arm.
He was looking at Noah, and Noah didn't know how long he'd been looking.
"Yeah," Noah said. "Library."
"In this heat?"
"It was due."
It wasn't due. It was due in March.
Damian didn't say anything.
He just kept looking, and Noah's face went hot.
Then Damian sat up and swung his good leg off the bed.
"I need a shower."
"Okay."
"I stink."
"You're fine."
Damian laughed once, through his nose.
He reached for the crutches leaning against the wall.
They were too far.
He stretched for them anyway, and the mattress tipped him sideways.
He caught himself on the desk.
His bad foot touched the floor.
His whole face went white.
"Damian."
"I'm fine."
He sat back down hard and breathed through his teeth.
Noah watched him look at the door.
The bathroom was halfway down the corridor.
It might as well have been in Sydney.
Damian didn't ask for help.
He just sat there, gripping the edge of the bed, working out how to do it on his own.
"I can help you," Noah said.
Damian looked up.
"You don't have to."
"I know."
Damian was quiet for a second.
Then he nodded at the hook on the back of the door.
"Can you grab my towel?"
It was his big green one with a white stripe and D.W. stitched in the corner.
Noah handed it over without looking at him.
"Turn around a sec."
Noah turned around and faced the window.
He heard the bed creak.
He heard something soft hit the floor.
"Okay."
When Noah turned back, the towel was wrapped around Damian's hips and his trunks were lying on the floor.
Noah didn't say anything about that.
He went to Damian's right side and crouched.
Damian put his arm over Noah's shoulders.
He was heavy, and very warm, and he smelled like cut grass.
"On three," Noah said.
"You're going to count?"
"One. Two."
Damian stood up on three.
They swayed.
His hand closed on Noah's shoulder hard enough to hurt.
"Good," Noah said. "Now hop."
Damian hopped.
Noah took a step to keep up.
His foot came down on a chip packet.
Under it was a puddle of flat Coke that had been soaking into the lino since Saturday.
His foot went straight out from under him.
He grabbed for the closest thing.
It was the towel.
Noah hit the floor on his back.
The towel came with him.
For a second all he could see was the ceiling fan turning.
Then he looked up.
Damian was standing on one leg, holding on to the desk with both hands.
He was naked.
He was hard.
And he wasn't looking at the door, or the towel, or the mess.
He was looking straight down at Noah.
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