Push Novel – When I was stuck on the highway with our baby and a crashed car, my husband was with his childhood sweetheart. They were at a party. A party I wasn’t invited to. “Did you get hold of Toby?” Marnie shook her head. “I tried a hundred times on the drive across town. Called the clinic. Called the hospitals. Called his mother. I eventually got through to that numbskull friend of his.” “Ian? What did he say?” “Ian said… Well…” She paused, her eyes looking somewhere over my shoulder, probably searching for the right words so I didn’t freak out even more. “Toby’s at a party.” “A party?” On a Tuesday night? Who does that? “What party?” “A housewarming party. At Kayleigh’s place.” No way. My head was swimming. Dizzy. Drunk on the shock. Kayleigh wasn’t a name I wanted to hear.
GWEN “I don’t know where Toby is.” Judy babbled on, but I barely heard a word. My phone was pressed to my ear, clutched in my hand so tight my fingers burned. Not that it made a difference. Every word spoken by the woman who managed my husband’s dental clinic was smothered by the roar of trucks blasting past me on the highway. I wedged closer to the steel barrier as if another two steps would somehow dull the noise. I wasn’t even sure Judy could hear me, but I needed to try. I was running out of options. Frantic words tumbled out. “Does anyone else at the clinic know how to get in touch with Toby?” I flicked a glance over my shoulder at the chaos swarming behind me. “It’s an emergency.” That was an understatement. Three cars written off. Tow trucks. Paramedics. Cops. The night sky was on fire with the flash of red and blue lights.
What a shitshow. And then there was me. The blob of expensive athleisure huddled off to the side. I was a whole mood. There was no hint of the lawyer I used to be. I was rocking the suburban housewife vibe these days. Sparkly flip-flops. Yoga pants riding up my butt. Baby propped on my hip. Noah looked like an overstuffed blueberry snuggled up in his puffy coat, but he was getting restless, wriggly, kicking his chubby baby legs. I had the same itch to run. We’d been stranded too long. I wished the old me was there. She wouldn’t be freaking out on the side of the road. She’d never act so helpless. She’d take care of everything. Whip everyone into shape. Make that happen. I huffed out a frustrated breath. That girl was long gone. She was off licking her wounds because the shattered pieces of her career, everything that made her tick—were buried under a pile of dirty diapers and endless responsibilities.
Judy started talking again. “He—” A horn blared. “Five—maybe—” The steady whoosh of headlights turned fuzzy. Hot tears leaked down my cheeks, but I quickly scrubbed them away with the back of my hand. Talking to Judy was a total waste of time. I needed help. Screw that. I needed help an hour ago. “Tell Toby to call me.” My thumb hit the screen to end the call, and I jammed my phone back into the waistband of my yoga pants. Where was Toby? I had no clue. Every panicked call went straight to voicemail. I sent a hundred messages telling him I was stranded on the highway with Noah after some moron cut me off and… nothing. Toby should have clocked off work at least an hour ago. Even on the nights he was on call for emergencies, he always came home first. He should be walking in the back door right about now, kicking off his shoes, smiles and smooches ready for me and Noah. Wasn’t he worried we weren’t at home? Why wasn’t he answering his phone?
Nerves burst to life in my belly. Was Toby okay? Fate couldn’t be cruel enough for us both to be in an accident on the same night, could it? It could. It really could. God, anything could have happened. Maybe Toby was hurt. What if he— I slammed the brakes on those thoughts quicker than I stopped my car in the accident. This wasn’t the time for full panic mode. Noah needed me. I wasn’t getting either of us off this highway if I collapsed into an emotional black hole. I closed my eyes. Got my thing together. Focussed. The night air was a cold smooch on my cheeks. Noah was warm and safe and heavy hanging off my hip. I took a deep breath and forced the rest of the world to disappear, and for one magical second, I was free. The accident, the traffic, the lights—it all vanished. Somehow, it would be. It had to be. Headlights suddenly swerved off the road. The beam pinned me in place like a robber in a spotlight. My heart rattled faster under my ribs, and I stumbled backward, my nerves still coiled too tight after the accident. I squinted, hand over my eyes, wondering what was coming for me now. The tiny red car screeched to a stop. My lips were soft on Noah’s fuzz. There was a hint of a smile, too.
“We’re going to be okay.” The car door flew open and Marnie’s hand shot up in a frantic wave. “Gwen!” She slammed the car door so fast that the bottom of her skirt got stuck. A sheepish smile flashed in my direction as she yanked it free. “The cavalry has arrived!” Relief flooded my muscles until they were jelly. No one else would guess Marnie was reliable. Her head floated in the clouds. Always too busy thinking about art and pottery and sculpting pretty shapes out of ugly bits of rubbish to bother remembering the everyday kind of details. I knew I could count on her. She was a true friend. My best friend. She’d never let me down. Marnie darted around the broken shards of what used to be my headlight and the bit of fender the cops had kicked to the side. “God!” Her eyes bulged. “Gwen, your car! The front end’s completely totaled! What happened?” I jerked my chin at the guy slouched against the tow truck. “Old mate over there didn’t bother checking his blind spot before changing lanes.” Marnie’s eyes rolled. “What a dummy.” She squeezed her arm around me.
“You okay?” I kind of nodded. Physically, I was okay. The paramedics checked us over and gave us the all-clear. But mentally? Not even close. The accident ranked in the top ten worst moments of my life. It was right up there with the time I got food poisoning on a three-day remote kayaking trip where there were no toilets. Yeah. That’s right. No toilets. Marnie shot me a skeptical look but spared playing twenty questions. She was good like that. Knew when to back off. She bent down to Noah and crooked a finger stained with dried watercolors to tickle his cheek. “What about you, little man?” she cooed. “You okay?” There were none of the usual gummy smiles for Auntie Marnie. Noah’s thumb stayed stuffed in his mouth, and his big eyes blinked, cautious and heavy from too much crying and being way past his bedtime. I snuggled his puffy coat closer into my side. “Did you get hold of Toby?” Marnie shook her head. “I tried a hundred times on the drive across town.
Called the clinic. Called the hospitals. Called his mother.” She let that comment sink in. We both knew it was dire straits if Sarah Sullivan had to be involved. Toby’s mum wasn’t exactly on my Christmas card list. “I eventually got through to that numbskull friend of his.” “Ian? What did he say?” Marnie gnawed her teeth into her bottom lip. Uh oh. That wasn’t a good sign. “What?” The panic I’d slammed the brakes on earlier was suddenly speeding out of control again. “Oh my god, is Toby okay—” Marnie’s hand landed on my shoulder. “Toby’s okay.” She gave me a second to breathe before she tried explaining again. “Ian said… Well…” She paused, her eyes looking somewhere over my shoulder, probably searching for the right words so I didn’t freak out even more. “Toby’s at a party.” “A party?” On a Tuesday night? Who does that? “What party?” My brain was scrambled. This made no sense. I’d crowned myself our family’s Domestic Social Planner. I’d happily hand over the mental load in a heartbeat, but I figured if I was stuck organizing our lives, I should at least have a fancy title.
And as the Sullivan household’s inaugural Domestic Social Planner, other than the first birthday bash for Alfie Rawles next month, there were no other invites on the calendar. “Yeah, a party.” Marnie kicked at a bit of broken headlight with the toe of her sandal. “A housewarming party.” Nothing registered. My mind was still coming up blank. “Okay?” “At Kayleigh’s place.” I took a step back. No way. My head was swimming. Dizzy. Drunk on the shock. Kayleigh wasn’t a name I wanted to hear. A twenty-three-year-old nothing shouldn’t tie me up in knots, but Kayleigh was like an itch that never went away because you weren’t quite sure where to scratch. She was just there. Everywhere. All the time. She was the one who always answered Toby’s phone when he was busy handling an emergency cavity or fixing a cracked tooth if some kid fell off the monkey bars. She got him coffee. She laughed a little too long at his terrible jokes at the dental clinic’s last Christmas party.
I wasn’t jealous. I had no reason to be, right? Toby insisted there was nothing to worry about. There was nothing weird about a girl barely out of college who’d majored in medieval French literature—of all bloody things—being his dental assistant. Nothing was going on. Nothing at all. Except I was the one stuck on the highway with our baby and a crashed car, and he was with her. Just low-key chilling out at her apartment. At a party I wasn’t invited to. I forced a smile. “I’m sure it’s nothing.” Denial. Pure denial. “Right?” But I knew it meant everything by the way Marnie avoided my eyes. She kicked at the bit of headlight again. “There’s photos.” “Photos?” I popped Noah higher on my hip, my hand fumbling to drag out my phone. “Tell me you’re joking.” Marnie shook her head. She wasn’t. She wouldn’t. Not about something like that. I zipped through social media posts at record speed. It didn’t take long to find what I was looking for. Kayleigh’s housewarming shindig was practically trending. I started swiping through the photos. The chain twisting around my heart loosened.
What was Marnie so worried about? Looked like a bloody boring party. Artsy photos of balloons. A cake. Familiar faces from Toby’s work. Wanna know who’s not fun to chat with at parties? Dentists. And every photo confirmed this party was swarming with a whole bunch of personalities about as exciting as my grandma’s dried-out old meatloaf. I swiped to the next photo. Shock cracked my chest open so wide I was sure my heart would splatter on the road with all the other broken junk from the accident. Marnie’s hand was back on my shoulder with a reassuring squeeze. “You okay?” I nodded, dumb, speechless. I blinked again at my phone, but the photo stayed the same. Kayleigh was front and center, shiny and perfect, squeezed into an emerald dress that left very little to the imagination. With one of her strappy silver heels kicked up, she was leaning over to plant a smooch on the cheek of the man grinning for the camera. His arm was around her shoulder. Her arms were around his waist. The crowd of boring dentists cheered in the background. All fun and games. What a hoot.
But I wasn’t having fun. I wasn’t even sure I was breathing anymore. Because the man with the traitorous smile beaming back at me was my husband. TOBY I had no idea what time it was. I’d been slumped in the corner of the bathroom for so long I wasn’t even sure what year it was anymore. I rubbed at my temple. My head ached like I’d been hit with a brick instead of having a few drinks. But if that was the worst of it, I could handle it. Anything was better than the world spinning around like a mess of socks in a washing machine again. There was a knock on the bathroom door. “Toby?” A laugh edged Ian’s voice. “You alive in there?” I grunted. “Barely.” “Come on out, Cinderella. The ball’s just about over.” Best news I’d heard all night. My knees were rusty with the effort to drag me off the floor. Thirty was young, I suppose, but I was way too old to be hiding in my dental assistant’s bathroom. I was a family man. A role model. I wasn’t the guy who silently prayed that he wouldn’t hurl his guts up on the fluffy white bathmat. I was usually the one hauling that dipshit home.
Ian was lounging against the wall beside the bathroom door. A grin cracked in his cheek when he saw me. The smug guy was loving this. “I’m thinking six vodka shots might be your limit.” “I’m thinking my limit was three.” “Lightweight.” He laughed. “Maybe we should stick to beers next time?” “There won’t be a next time.” I meant it. I was more than happy to hang up my party hat and go back to being Ian’s designated driver. I’d never been much of a drinker anyway. A couple of beers watching the game. Maybe a wine with dinner. The only time I ever came close to being drunk was at my sister’s wedding. Way too many emotions and too much drama for me. I escaped most of my family’s squabbling about the seating arrangements by setting up a residence at the open bar. That got the tongues wagging. Good ol’ reliable Toby wouldn’t get shitfaced at his sister’s wedding, would he? I wouldn’t—my sister would have ended me if I ruined her big day—but by the time the speeches rolled around, I was more than a little unsteady on my feet. I waved goodbye to the filter over my mouth that usually kept me safe and left it with the empty glasses on the bar. But, can I just say, my speech was legendary.
People still laughed about it. My sister even had a quote framed and mounted with her wedding photos. My mother didn’t laugh, though. She said I was an embarrassment. She probably just didn’t get the jokes. Kayleigh’s party was a bit like my sister’s wedding. A lot of emotions. Too much drama. I knew the vodka shots were a bad idea. Scratch that. I knew the whole party was a bad idea. I never should have gone. But after hauling to finish another twelve-hour day, I had no gas left in the tank to fight off Ian and his ‘great idea’ of me tagging along. It wasn’t a great idea. It was an absolutely terrible idea. I’d been praying Gwen would shut the whole thing down. Who had a party on a Tuesday night? Instead, when Kayleigh called her, she was all for it. Have a great time. You need a break. Enjoy yourself. And suddenly, I was all out of excuses and trapped inside Kayleigh’s apartment with a bunch of colleagues and a whole new bunch of problems. The throbbing in my temple was still bothering me.
I rubbed it with my palm as I fell in step beside Ian. “What time is it anyway?” “Dunno? After ten?” “Ten!” My hand fumbled over the back pocket of my trousers. Only my wallet. My keys. “Oh.” My pulse started hammering. I patted down my chest even though I wasn’t wearing a jacket. No phone. “I need to get home. Have you seen my—” “Mate.” Ian’s palm clapped down on my shoulder. “Relax. I’ve got you covered, remember?” I didn’t remember. “You’re golden.” Nothing was golden. I’d already missed seeing Noah before his bedtime. I’d probably miss seeing Gwen now, too. Traffic wouldn’t be bumper to bumper this late at night, but by the time I drove across town, she’d be asleep. My chest was hollow. I tried to ignore how disconnected I felt from my own life. Ian and I didn’t pass anyone on our way back to the living room. The swarms of people had disappeared. Not that it mattered. All I needed was to find my phone. I wanted out.
The sooner, the better. I’d only scanned the kitchen counter and dug around in the fruit basket when I noticed Ian heading for the front door. “Are you leaving?” He was. His jacket was in his hand. “I don’t believe this! You’re just pissing off?” “My duty here’s done. You’re alive, and the party’s over…” His eyebrow arched. “For some of us.” I might hurl after all. If Ian burned my ears with any details about his dating app conquests, I couldn’t be held responsible for what happened next. Lock up your bath mats. “Can’t you at least stick around to help me look for my phone?” “Kayleigh will give you a hand. Right?” Ian’s smug smirk only made the throb in my temple pound harder. “Look, I know you think you’re angry, but trust me. Have I ever let you down before?” “Yes. All the time.” He couldn’t be serious. After all the years we’d been friends? After all the times I’d saved him? Was that even a question? “Literally hundreds of times.” Ian roared with laughter.
“Mate, you’ll be thanking me tomorrow. You’ll see.” He slapped a hand on my back. “Lucky dog.” He was out the door, and I was only just picking my jaw off the floor when Kayleigh flew down the stairs into the living room. A trash bag stuffed with cans and bottles bumped along behind her. “Kay, you seen my phone?” She glanced at me over her shoulder. “Oh—umm—no.” She nibbled on her bottom lip. “I don’t think so.” Screw this. Screw this whole night. I kept searching. Kayleigh weaved around the living room, collecting more cans to toss in her trash bag. She chirped away about the party. I think. I wasn’t really in the mood for listening. I nodded sometimes. Offered the occasional ‘oh yeah’. I just wanted to find my phone and go home. Eventually, I found it wedged between the sofa cushions. Huh. I didn’t even remember sitting on the sofa. I tapped at the screen. Pressed a few buttons. Nothing. The thing was out of battery. “Kay, you got a charger?” “Maybe? I have a different type of phone, but check the top drawer.” She pointed over to the kitchen cabinets. “There’s heaps of junk in there.” I rummaged around. I didn’t realize straight away that Kayleigh was beside me. She’d knotted her trash bag and left it by the door.
She was peering in the drawer over my shoulder. “Find one?” “Nah. Found some playing cards and a death star keyring.” I grinned down at her. “No charger.” She sort of shrugged. Her lips curved into a slow smile. “You disappeared for a long time. Feeling better?” Her fingertips were light on my arm. “Want me to make you a coffee?” And make this night last even longer? No thank you. I forced a tight smile. “I’m good.” “You sure?” Kayleigh’s hand was on my back now. “I have your favorite.” Something about the soft stroke of her fingers over my shirt scrambled my nerves. Everything in the room was swimming like I’d downed another vodka shot. My heart was thumping. I didn’t want it to. This was… wrong. All wrong. Kayleigh blinked up at me from under dark lashes. She seemed nervous. Skittish. Not like her. “Usually, you look all polished… and… perfect…” A small smile curled her lips until fresh nerves made her bite it back. “Tonight you’re… real. Look at you with your hair all mussed up.” Her finger skated over my forehead to push back my apparently mussy hair.
“You’re as handsome as Erec.” Oh, Christ. Not this again. The poem. I usually tuned out when Kayleigh started rambling about the tales of her beloved Erec and Enide. Maybe I should have made a stronger argument when Ian hired her and asked for a dental assistant interested in anything other than French literature. Chess. Cricket. Canasta. All boring things that made my eyes glaze over, but still more interesting than her poetry stuff. I took a step back. “I hardly compare to your dashing knight. I’m just… you know…” My laugh was strained. “Toby the Dentist.” “You’ve never been just Toby. Not to me. You’re so driven… and caring… and kind.” Her finger traced the collar of my shirt. “You’re my knight in shining armor.” Oh. I took another step back, but this time, there was nowhere to go. I hit the fridge. “Uh… Kay.” I raised my palm to her shoulder and pushed her back—gently—like she was a kitten nipping at my hand. “I’m sorry. I think you’ve misunderstood—” “I understand perfectly,” she purred. “You’re always finding little excuses to touch me. Always bumping into me—” “The treatment room is cramped! I’m not always looking where I’m going. It’s—Kay, I’m married.”
Kayleigh’s chin jutted up, her gaze defiant. She was telling me that my wife wasn’t a barrier for her. “Please. When was the last time Gwen took care of you?” She inched closer until her warm breath fanned on my neck. “When was the last time Gwen focussed only on you? Worried about you?” Blood was pounding in my ears. Kayleigh was too close. And it wasn’t just the way her body seemed to have coiled around mine. It was her words, too. Had I been stupid enough to say something out loud? Had I let the world hear that my relationship with Gwen was strained? That I did nothing right? That I slept more nights on the sofa than the bed because we snipped at each other so much? “When was the last time she smooched you? Really smooched you? Made you feel like you were the only thing in the whole world that mattered?” I tried to swallow, but there was a noose around my throat. When had I last felt like I mattered to Gwen? Not for a really long time.
Not since Noah was born. Maybe… not for a long time before that. The noose around my throat tightened. God, I missed that feeling. I missed that so much. Kayleigh’s arm weaved around my back, and she whispered in my ear, “I want to make you feel like that.” My pulse hammered. “Do you…?” My voice was thick. It didn’t sound like me. Kayleigh answered with a breathy laugh. It was an invitation for more, and I took it. I ignored every ounce of sense to chase the feeling of old ghosts on my lips. I palmed Kayleigh’s hip. When her breath hitched, a possessive look flashing up at me, I liked it. I dragged her closer. And when her fingertips trailed up my neck into my hair, her lips on my jaw, I didn’t tell her to stop. My nose grazed along hers, and an old, broken part of me woke up and demanded even more. So, I smooched her. And I still didn’t stop. I leaned into her. I let myself feel it—enjoy it—because I needed it. But the bitter taste of that desperate smooch burned my throat like acid. Nothing about smooching Kayleigh felt right. Her sloppy mouth all over mine was the last thing I needed. I needed Gwen. I forced air into my lungs. The walls of Kayleigh’s apartment were crushing down on me.
I needed space to breathe. I pushed her back. “I shouldn’t—we shouldn’t—that was—” Her cheeks were flushed, and she tugged on the front of my shirt to pull me back. “That was perfect.” “What?” I struggled free from her claws. “No.” She blinked up at me, confused, so I said it again. “No. This was wrong. All wrong.” I raked a hand through my hair. The seams of my soul had split open, and guilt was already starting to spill out, hot and raw and ugly. “I need to go.” I headed straight for the door. “Toby—wait!” I could hear Kayleigh’s heels clipping after me on the tiles, but I wasn’t slowing down. I wasn’t looking over my shoulder. All I wanted was to escape. “What about charging your phone—” “I’ll take my chances.” Another one of my legendary drunk jokes. As if I hadn’t used up all my chances already. GWEN The mug was overflowing. Water pooled on the wooden countertop. I blinked. The world was speeding ahead in front of me, but my thoughts were choked in a thick black fog at the starting line. I could see the kettle in my hand, tipped down, water gushing into the mug and spilling over the sides like a waterfall. I did nothing to stop it. Everything was numb. My mind was stuck on empty.
Pumping my foot on the gas wouldn’t change anything. I could only think about one thing. Where was Toby? “Gwen!” Marnie’s hip bumped me out of the way, and she pried the kettle from my fingers. “I’ll make the tea. You sit down, okay? I’ve got this.” I sort of nodded. Her words were blurred by the endless flicker of remembering Kayleigh’s lips on Toby’s cheek. Forty people liked that photo. Forty. Friends. Family. The facilitator at Noah’s sensory class. Everyone knew. Everyone. Marnie’s hip bumped me again. “Living room. Now.” She hissed a curse when she spotted the water pooled on the countertop and snatched up a tea towel to mop up the mess I’d made. “Go, go, go!” I shuffled to the living room. I flopped on the sofa. The mountain of pillows I’d painstakingly chosen to fit my whole modern farmhouse vibe only annoyed me. Nothing felt cozy. Everything itched. Even my brain itched. Who did I piss off in a past life for my day to turn into this trainwreck? I started my morning dreaming of a cappuccino. That was it. Dreams got smaller—simpler—when you were a stay-at-home mum facing most of the world alone. But did I bundle Noah up in his stroller to treat myself to a fancy coffee from the cafe down the road? No. I stayed home. I was responsible. I folded the never-ending stack of cloth nappies.
I pureed another freaking batch of peas and carrots. Surely that earned me enough brownie points on the universal meter to at least spare me the car accident? Apparently not. Marnie fluttered into the living room. Nervous energy sparked off her like a frayed electrical cord. The mugs shook when she slid them onto the coffee table. Tea sloshed over the edge and dripped down the sides. I was unsettled, too. This was new territory for both of us. Usually, I was the one comforting Marnie as she jumped from heartbreak to heartbreak. Her emotions were a firecracker. Pure passion. Explosive. I was the one who stayed calm. We were the perfect team. Just like those pureed peas and carrots Noah liked so much. Marnie fretting over me like a worried nanna was all back to front. It didn’t feel right. She nudged my mug a little closer. “Drink up. You’ll feel better.” “The world’s problems can’t always be solved by sitting around drinking tea, Mar.” “Some of them probably can.”
“It won’t change the fact Toby isn’t here. It won’t delete that photo.” “No, it won’t, but maybe there’s another explanation? Maybe it’s just a dumb photo?” The look I tossed her was dubious. She’d said that in the car on the drive home, too. We all knew straight-laced Toby turned into the life of the party when he was tipsy. The photo probably meant nothing. A drunken laugh. Except I wasn’t laughing. Maybe on its own, that photo didn’t mean much to anyone else, but it was hard to switch off all my years as a prosecutor. In my old line of work, we called photos like that circumstantial evidence. Follow all the other breadcrumbs those two had left behind, and there was only one logical conclusion, right? No matter which way you looked at it, the doe-eyed kitten in the green dress was a lot more than just a dental assistant at Toby’s work. “Gwen, I can hear your mind grinding from over here.” Marnie’s foot kicked out and tapped against my shin. She wanted to snap me out of my spiral. “I’m sure there will be a simple explanation for all this. I mean, we’re talking about Toby here. In the Dumb Duo, he’s always been the reliable one.” “People change.” They did. I’d changed, too.
Maybe Toby didn’t like the new me? I loved being a mum, but I still had my training wheels on. I wasn’t sure I was doing anything right. I wasn’t sure if I liked the new me yet, either. Marnie’s foot tapped against my shin again. “Think back over all the times Toby’s shown you how much you mean to him.” I snorted. “Like when?” “What about all the mornings he made you one of those brekkie bagels for the drive to work?” “He hasn’t done anything like that since I went on maternity leave.” “What about when he braved a storm at two in the morning to get you ice cream?” I couldn’t bat that one away so easily. He did. He really did. I was a curled-up ball of misery on day two of my period, and he didn’t even blink before hopping in the car to make a dash for the convenience store. It was sweet. Old school Toby. My sigh was so heavy that my chest caved in and my shoulders slumped forward. Marnie’s trip down memory should have made me all warm and gooey, but my tummy was churning like I’d skulled last week’s milk. When was the last time Toby spoiled me just… because? So much had changed.