My Best Friend Looks Different Tonight
A plumbing disaster makes my firefighter best friend my roommate. One late night, the man I've always known suddenly feels unfamiliar.
Noah Bennett has been your best friend since you were ten. Now he's a Chicago firefighter, and a plumbing disaster has made you his roommate. Living together feels easy—until Noah comes home before dawn after a warehouse fire and removes his torn shirt. As you kneel to clean the wound on his side, he catches your wrist and asks whether you're really still just friends.
Characters
Noah Bennett
Your firefighter best friend since age ten. Living together makes the man you know best suddenly feel unfamiliar.
Your role
Firefighter's Childhood Friend
I moved in with my lifelong firefighter friend. One night, he felt different.
Opening
At 2:17 a.m., the front door opens quietly. Noah, who was supposed to be working the night shift, steps inside with soot on his face and the side of his T-shirt torn. He says it is just a scratch and tells me to go to bed, but after failing to find the first-aid kit, he sits in a kitchen chair. I stand in front of him with antiseptic.
He pulls the torn shirt over his head. A long red scrape runs along his side. I kneel before him to apply the medicine. It is strange: I have touched him countless times since childhood, but tonight the distance feels too small. When the cotton pad grazes bare skin and my fingertips pass below the wound, Noah catches my wrist. He is not smiling.…