Chapter 14
Tabby rarely drove. Her dad had taught her how in the old Holden when she was sixteen, just like Sam and Nix, but she hated having to be so hyperaware of her surroundings. And no matter how well she knew the roads, she was always sure she’d get lost.
But this was an emergency. The emergency to end all emergencies. She’d borrowed Nix’s Land Cruiser, and even if she dinged every parked car, light pole, and human being between here and St Kilda, she was going to see Toby Tennant.
It had been a week since they’d fucked. Seven whole days. And no matter how many lovely messages he sent or friendly phone calls they had, Tabby knew something was wrong. In fact, the nice messages and calls proved it.
Before Toby had switched off the sex-tap, they’d mostly messaged horny missives about what they were going to do to each other. Their current conversations were such a sharp return to friend form, it made her head spin. She’d sent him nudes; the dirtiest stuff she could come up with, with her face entirely visible, and all he texted back was, ‘You’re so beautiful,’ and bullshit like that.
Where was the aggression? Where was the bossy, arrogant shit-talk?
She didn’t need Toby to ask how her day was going; she needed him to grab her by her hair and fuck her until she forgot how to feel feelings. And then there was the fact he said he was too busy with work to hook up. What fucking work? From everything she’d learned about his job, it was basically fake, and God knew he didn’t need the money. But whenever she brought that up, Toby passed the buck.
“I want to see you again,” he kept saying. “And I promise we’ll meet up soon, but I have to sort out some important things. Is that okay?”
She’d said it was, but she could use more information on these ‘important things’ and whether or not they had blonde hair. Not that Toby seemed disinterested. He constantly texted, and they’d had phone sex two nights ago. But between trying to get her to ‘open up about her emotions’ and telling her how pretty she was, Toby had refused to say anything meaner than ‘you’re such a naughty girl.’
No, something weird was going on, which was why she was sitting behind the wheel of her sister’s car in six-inch pumps and a pleather bandage dress, hoping Toby would take one look at her and ass-fuck her in his foyer again. And if he didn’t, if all this polite chit-chat was the motherfucker’s way of soft dumping her, she was going to confront him to his face. He’d ghosted her once; he wasn’t doing it twice. Not without her throwing something at his head.
Tabby swore as yet another traffic light turned red. She sat tapping her nails against the steering wheel and tried not to think where she’d just been or what had happened. She didn’t want to think about anything except what Toby would say and do when he saw her. Her pussy throbbed, deprived of its favourite toys—namely Toby’s fingers, tongue, and cock—for a week. God, she needed to hook up with the man…
The light turned green, and she accelerated as fast as she could without jamming into the car in front of her. Her phone said it was ten minutes to Toby’s house, which was ten too many.
The map vanished as Sam’s billionth call flashed up on her phone. Tabby hit the red button, but it was almost instantly replaced by Nix, who was also trying to ring her.
“Fuckssake,” she hissed. At the next red light, she turned off her alerts. Her sisters knew she was okay; she’d told them so. And if they weren’t fine, they could talk to each other, their partners, or anyone else.
After an eternity, she made it to the quiet street containing Toby Tennant’s house. She parked at the curb, checked her lipstick, and got out. The night was cold, and she hadn’t brought a coat, but she refused to wrap her arms across her chest as she strutted to the gate and pounded in the entrance code. This was a slut walk for the ages. Whether Toby wanted to fuck her or tell her to fuck off, she’d be serving cunt so fresh all you could smell was seawater.
She rang the bell, trying not to shiver in her heels, and it occurred to her that he might not be home. That 8 p.m. on a Thursday was an entirely appropriate time for a young professional to still be at dinner. She pulled out her phone and read his last message, which had come at 4 p.m. while she was?—
But that didn’t matter.
Hey beautiful, I hope you’re having a good afternoon. I’m thinking about you.
“Thinking about what though?”Tabby muttered. “How much you want me to gag on your cock or…?”
She heard footsteps and shoved her phone back into her seashell clutch just before Toby opened the door. He looked beyond cuddly in his grey sweatpants and a blue T-shirt with a teddy bear design stitched on the front, and his light brown hair was standing on end. Tabby’s mood brightened like someone had flicked on a hundred-watt bulb.
“Hi,” she said. “You’re home.”
“Yeah, I am. Hi.” Toby’s gaze dropped to her plunging neckline. “Holy… did we make plans?”
“I did.” Tabby strutted past him, hips swaying so Toby could take in the full effect of pleather on her bare ass. She heard a faint choking sound and bit back a smile. It was so on. It was one hundred percent on. She was going to be taken, bitten, and spanked. She was going to come her absolute mind out all over Toby Tennant’s cock, and then everything would be good again.
She turned in the middle of the foyer, dropping her seashell clutch to the floor. “Do you want me upstairs, or should you fuck me right here?”
Toby shoved his hands into his pockets, but the act failed to conceal his hard-on. “I don’t know… Tabs, I’m so happy to see you, but there’s some stuff we should probably discuss?”
“That’s where you’re wrong,” Tabby purred in her most provocative sex voice. “I want you to make it hurt this time. Won’t you please make it hurt for me, Toby?”
His eyes flicked up as though calling on a higher power. “Tabby…”
“What? What’s the problem?”
“I don’t think?—”
She peeled down the straps of her dress, releasing her boobs. “I do think you should fuck me on all fours with your fingers in my asshole. Do you remember how good that was last time? Right in this foyer with me screaming for your cock?”
Toby looked like hell had opened up before him, and the devil himself was trying to lure him inside with free beer and last-minute grand final tickets. “Tabitha.”
“What?” She cupped her breasts, pushing them together. “Didn’t you like doing that to me? Making me beg?”
“I… of course.” Toby shook his head like a wet dog. “Okay, you want to make this hard?—”
“I think it’s already hard.”
“I can’t do this,” Toby said, turning around.
Tabby let go of her tits. “What the hell, man?”
“We need to talk, and until you stop it with all this Jessica Rabbit shit, I’m not gonna look at you.”
“What are you talking about, you melon?”
“I think we should go upstairs and have a cup of tea and?—”
“I don’t want a cup of tea,” she snapped, probably louder than was necessary. “What’s the fucking deal? Why are you being lame? Fuck me.”
Toby held up a finger. “Passing over the fact you think I’m being lame, I didn’t want to say it like this, but Noah and I talked.”
Tabby felt dangerously close to throwing up. She pressed a hand to her solar plexus, willing everything to stay down. “What? How? About what?”
“About us. Noah figured out we were hooking up, and he came around to talk to me a week ago?—”
“He fucking did what now!?”
The timeline of Toby’s backslide into nice-boy behaviour suddenly made absolute sense. Noah, the giant cockblocking cuntlord, must have put the hard word on Toby, and he’d refused to see her or be even slightly mean since. Anger tore through Tabby like wildfire, and she suddenly wanted nothing more than to claw her brother-in-law’s eyes out. He had been devastated since Nix’s latest miscarriage, and rightfully so, but this crossed a million fucked up lines.
“What the fuck does Noah thinks he’s doing, keeping tabs on me?” she asked Toby’s back. “I’m twenty-fucking-seven, and he can go fuck himself!”
Toby turned, his expression grave. “He’s worried about you, and I don’t blame him. Again, I didn’t want to say it like this, but he told me that… well...”
Nausea swam through Tabby’s torso, and she pressed her stomach harder. “What? What did that Judas fuckface tell you?”
A muscle ticked in Toby’s jaw, but his pale blue eyes were gentle. “That your mother’s in town. That she’s been… he said she was basically stalking you.”
Tabby saw Sam’s face as they had walked toward the Albert Street café. She’d been pale as a sheet but quiet.
“You don’t seem angry,” Tabby had said.
“I’m not,” Sam replied. “That woman doesn’t deserve my anger.”
She returned to her body, still standing in Toby Tennant’s foyer.
“Yeah,” she told him. “We saw that bitch today and it’s over now and I don’t want to talk about it.”
“Tabby—”
“No.” She put her hands on her hips. “No ‘Tabby.’ Either take me rough like I asked, or I’m leaving.”
Toby looked her up and down, genuine hurt etched all over his face.
She knew this wasn’t right. Anything they did now would be tainted with the stinging tail of her ultimatum, but she wouldn’t stop. Couldn’t. She needed to release all the emotion boiling up her insides. And sex with Toby was the best way she knew.
Unwillingly, she returned to the Albert Street café, sitting down in a booth between Sam and Nix. Her sisters had flanked her the entire walk there, standing on either side of her like sentries. While Sam looked numb, Nix had been poised and commanding—vibrating power from head to Louboutin-clad toes. A Valkyrie preparing to do battle. Her miscarriage hadn’t broken her. If anything, she had drawn strength from her pain. She’d sat straight as an arrow, one hand on Tabby’s arm, the other on her purse, watching the door for Jo.
“I don’t want to talk about this,” she told Toby again, but her voice seemed to be coming from a faraway place.
They’d all ordered coffee but been unable to have more than a few token sips.
“She’s late,” Nix muttered. “I said four on the dot.”
“Oh, the runaway mother’s bad at timekeeping?” Sam replied. “Strike me fucking surprised.”
It was almost five when Jo walked through the door. She wore a navy jumper and black jeans and looked so much like Sam and Nix that Tabby nearly puked right into her coffee. She’d had to excuse herself and go to the bathroom three times to throw up while they’d waited. Sam and Nix accompanied her, as though worried their mum might spring out of a sanitary bin and snatch her.
“Hello, girls,” Jo had said, twisting her sleeves in her hands like a teenager. “Sorry, I’m late.”
“To this meeting?” Nicole said with venomous sweetness. “Or our adulthoods?”
Jo’s expression, which had hovered between nerves and sheepishness, instantly changed. With her brows pinched, and her teeth bared, she was the spitting image of Sam. “Oh, that’s going to be your attitude?” she snarled. “You’ve brought me here just to tear me down like you always di?—”
“Shut up and sit down,” Nicole snapped. “You’re acting like a child.”
Her withering contempt was a hundred times scarier than Jo’s anger, and Tabby had been sure their mum would storm off. But she’d dropped onto the bench opposite the three of them, Sam’s sneer still fixed on her face. “Job interview, is it?”
Tabby shrank back into the booth, but Nix and Sam leaned forward.
“Not quite,” Nix had said, her voice still loaded with artificial sweetener. “Would you like a coffee?”
“I’d like a wine,” Jo said. “A bottle if possible. Just stick a straw in the neck. A metal one if it helps the environment in any way.”
She talked like her, Tabby had realised—the same choppy sentences. Always trying to be funny but avoiding eye contact so you were free not to laugh if you didn’t want to.
And no one did.
“That won’t be possible,” Sam said flatly. “Nix, get to the pitch.”
“Pitch?” Jo had flashed a smile at Tabby then, as though inviting her to laugh at the twins. “What the hell does that mean?”
“You’re about to find out.” Nix had opened her bag and produced a manila folder. Sliding it across the table, she said, “This is a legal notice I’ve had drawn up. If you sign it, you’re agreeing to not contact any of us ever again.”
Jo pushed it back across the table. “Don’t be stupid, Nikki.”
“That’s the thing, Debbie. If you don’t sign it, Sam and I will take you to court and sue you for unpaid child support.”
Jo went white as a sheet. “You can’t…”
Nix’s smile didn’t budge as she returned the folder to their mother. “I can assure you, the three family law consultants I’ve spoken to all say I can.”
Jo opened the folder, a sleeved palm pressed to her open mouth. Tabby had known this was the plan, but it had been so fucking hard to watch Jo scan the document. Especially since she kept glancing up at her as though trying to convey something Tabby was supposed to understand, but couldn’t.
“So that’s pretty much it,” Nicole said airily. “Sign the document, Deborah, and then we’ll leave each other alone.”
To Tabby’s horror, tears formed in Jo’s eyes.
“Don’t you dare,” Sam snarled, every syllable dripping with dislike. “Don’t you dare fucking cry like you have the right. We’re the ones who should be crying.”
But that only made Jo’s shoulder shake even harder. “You can’t do this. I’m your mother. I came here to talk to you!”
“No, you didn’t,” Nix said. “If you did, you could have talked to us months ago when I first contacted you. But you ignored me and kept hovering around, trying to make contact with Tabby because you’ve still got this ridiculous idea that she’s yours.”
Just like that, Jo transformed again, her blue eyes narrowing to slits. “She is mine. You and Sammy belonged to your dad, and you didn’t give a shit about me. But Tabby loved me. She was my little girl.”
Jo’s hand shot out, almost knocking over Tabby’s coffee.
Nicole pulled Tabby back into the booth and out of Jo’s range. “How dare you,” she snarled. “How fucking dare you try to touch her.”
Her middle sister’s voice was quivering with rage so palpable, Jo sat back in her chair, looking childish once again. “Sorry?—”
“Fuck sorry,” Sam spat, fire to Nicole’s ice. “You’re a fucking psycho. We liked Dad better because he spent time with us, and if you’d stuck around, you’d have watched Tabby go the same way. She only put up with you because she was too young to know better. You’re lucky you’re too incompetent to kidnap a kid because fucking off on your own was the smartest thing you ever did in your whole insignificant life.”
There had been an argument then, jabs back and forth that Tabby had entirely missed. Sam had said they had the right to cry, so Tabby had started crying. The café was so loud no one noticed, but she’d failed to hear much of anything as she wished she’d never agreed to meet up with Jo, that she’d gone to see Toby instead. Asked him to make all this hurt feel insignificant.
“Oh, Babby-Tabby,” Jo had said, addressing her directly and pulling her back into the conversation. “I didn’t mean?—”
“You didn’t mean what?” Nicole demanded. “You didn’t mean to take our sister away from us?”
At that, Jo had grabbed the manila folder and opened it. “Fine! I guess I’ll just sign this since you’ve already decided I’m the worst mother in the world!”
“Number one with a bullet,” Sam said. “Need a fucking pen?”
“You girls,” Jo moaned. “You’re even more awful than I ever?—”
“I called you,” Nix said, and her voice was so cold goosebumps whispered down Tabby’s arms. “Ten years ago, we spoke on the phone, remember?”
Tabby had felt like she’d been electrocuted. She looked at Sam to see if she knew, but her oldest sister looked just as shocked. “What the hell, Nix?”
“I didn’t want to tell you, Sam,” Nicole said, her gaze locked on Jo. “I didn’t want you to get your hopes up, but I was Googling Mum, and I found her name listed at an artist’s residence on the Sunshine Coast. I got the number and asked to speak to Mrs DaSilva. You were still using that name back then,” she said to Jo. “I suppose you changed it after my call, didn’t you?”
Jo directed her gaze at the window. “I was in a bad place.”
“No, I was in a bad place,” Nix said. “Sam was in a bad place. Tabby was in a bad place. And I called you, and I wasn’t mean or rude. I just said, ‘Hey, Mum, it’s Nicole; sorry, but I need to talk to you.’ And do you remember what you did?”
“Nicole—”
“You hung up on me,” Nicole hissed. “You hung up on me, and you moved out that afternoon. And I kept calling and calling and speaking to all the other artists, and all of them said you never mentioned having kids. Actually, worse than that. You said you’d never had kids.”
Jo recoiled like she’d been slapped, and Nicole pulled her Givenchy bag onto her lap, and yanked out a pen. She tossed it into the manila folder. “Sign.”
And then Jo did. Tabby cried, Nix watched, and Sam glowered as their mother waived her right to ever communicate with them again, and all around, patrons with normal, everyday lives and families sipped lattes and ordered scrambled eggs and laughed together.
“There,” Jo said, tossing down the pen. “You’ve got what you wanted, haven’t you?”
“Not by a long shot.” Nicole shoved the folder back into her bag. “Go.”
But Jo’s gaze had found Tabby’s again. “Babby, I didn’t?—”
“Shut up, you old bag,” Sam said in a tired voice. “Just stop. All these theatrics are doing my head in.”
“It’s not theatrics!”
“What’s my partner’s name?” Sam asked. “Where did Nicole go to uni? Where was Tabby living when she was twenty? How old was I when I got my period?”
Jo flinched.
“You don’t know because you weren’t there, because you fucking suck,” Sam said in the same bored voice. “Now get out of here and leave us alone. The worst thing Dad ever did was marry you?—”
“And where is your father?” Jo snapped. “He’s gone, too. Tabby told me. You haven’t seen him in years, and yet I’m the one who has to sit here and listen to this bullshit?”
Tabby had recoiled, feeling beyond guilty at her stupid admission.
“Sorry,” she mumbled. “I shouldn’t have?—”
“It doesn’t matter.” Nicole wrapped an arm around her shoulder just as Sam’s came around her back.
“As far as Dad is concerned,” Nicole shot at Jo. “He was a better parent on his worst day than you were at your best.”
“Then where is he?” Jo sneered, and Tabby was struck by how mean the smiling, funny woman she’d once tattooed had become as this conversation progressed.
“Dunno, maybe he knew you were gonna show up,” Sam said. “But he was here when we needed a dad, and, on that note, shouldn’t you be fucking off?”
“Fine,” Jo said, still looking right at Tabby. “But I know we’ll always be connected, Babby—you and me. I might not be allowed to talk to you, but you can come talk to me. If you need to find me?—”
“She can just holler into the nearest sewerage system,” Sam said, her arm still tight around Tabby’s back. “Off you fuck, Deborah.”
Their mother didn’t move. “Babby, please just look at me?”
Her head was ringing like a broken alarm clock; Tabby tried, and found she couldn’t. She could not maintain eye contact with the woman who’d once told her to wait by the gate with her owl backpack so she could take her away from her sisters and her dad.
But you ran away in the end, didn’t you?A lone voice had whispered in her mind. All over the world and back. And you’ll do it again. Cartagena. Hanoi. Wherever. Whoever. You’ll never belong to anyone. You’ll never be okay.
“Tabby,” Jo had implored. “I’m your mum.”
“I’m her mum,” Nicole snapped. “Sam’s her mum. You’re a fucking incubator. Now go!”
But it had become clear to Tabby that Jo wouldn’t leave. Not until she said something. Wiping her eyes, she forced herself to meet her mother’s eyes. “We can’t be close,” she said in a voice that sounded nothing like hers. “You had a choice, and you made it. It’s done.”
“But—”
“This is my family,” she said. “Sam and Scott and Nix and Noah and Dad and the dogs and?—”
And she stopped herself before she said a ridiculous name—Toby’s.
“See?” Nicole snapped. “She doesn’t need you. You’re not a part of her life.”
“Really? Look at this.” Jo shoved up her sleeve and showed the tarot card tattoo Tabby had put there. Before Toby. Before the end of the world.
“She did this because she loves me! Look!”
Nicole laughed, tossing her long black hair like someone had just told a great joke at a dinner party. “I have something to show you, Deborah.”
She held up her right wrist, and Sam, smiling fit to kill a man, did the same.
“Twins with matching tattoos,” Jo snorted. “Original!”
“Oh, it’s not just us,” Nicole said. “Tabby?”
Her lips numb, Tabby had followed her sister, pushing up the sleeve of her lilac hoodie so their mother could see the daisy chain tattoo all three of them shared.
The power Tabby had felt flowing through her in that moment was surreal. She’d been so tied to her sisters, their dad, and the past. That shared, beautiful, ugly past that had been cemented in the tattoo they’d all been given by their dad the day they turned eighteen. Sam and Nix first. Her, five years later. The sisters of Brunswick North. The daughters of Silver Daughters Ink.
“Dad did them,” Nix said, and for the first time her voice was full of tears. “He was the first person to tattoo all of us because he was here. Because he matters.”
Jo’s eyes had darted between the matching daisy tattoos, her face pale and angry once again. Then she pointed a finger at Tabby. “You’re a selfish little bitch,” she spat. “You were supposed to come, but no. You abandoned me. You chose your fucking father like the other two. I tried, I fucking tried, but I shouldn’t have bothered. You’ve made up your mind. You wanted this life, these people. Well, good luck putting up with them, because you won’t see me ever again!”
At that, Sam and Nicole jumped to their feet, shouting and swearing so loud that the manager rushed over. But as her sisters had tried to explain and Jo swanned out of the café, without a backward glance, Tabby had just sat there, shellshocked.
She didn’t remember walking back from the café or a single word Nicole or Sam had said. She’d had barely a thought as she put on her black pleather dress and did her make up as fancy as she knew how. She’d driven to Toby with one thing on her mind—to escape in the way only he could provide. To return her to her body and hurt her in ways that made sense.
And now she was in his house, and he was saying the same things as her sisters—that she needed to talk and process and think about what had happened, and she felt the same irritation she’d felt back in Brunswick as she took Nicole’s car keys without asking and ignored Sam’s tears.
I can’t give you what you need, she’d told them. I can’t help you. I can’t even help myself.
Toby was still talking, still saying something about Jo.
“I’m just like her,” she interrupted. “Jo. Deborah. Whatever. I’m just like her. I run away, and I’m fucking useless. I’m unreliable, and I’m only good at art, and I hate myself like I hate her, and I’ve never lived up to anybody’s expectations, and I don’t want to talk about it anymore.”
Toby came close, his eyes full of that same concern that had driven her out of her home and into Nicole’s car. Tabby wished she’d never gone to the Village Belle that night. That they’d never reconnected. That she hadn’t slept with him at all.
“I should go,” she said. “I should leave. I don’t belong here.”
“You belong anywhere I am,” Toby said, and he pulled up his sleeve to show her the whole of his stag tattoo. “See? You know how I said I wanted fingerprints? I wanted your fingerprints. Why do you think I wanted that?”
Tabby was forcibly reminded of Jo showing off her tarot card tattoo, and bile rose in her mouth. “Stop it.”
“No.” Toby’s eyes burned. “Do you know why I wanted your fingerprints on me?”
“I don’t… why?”
“Because I’m in love with you.”
She’d said “no!” before she’d realised she’d said anything at all, and Toby’s face fell. He let go of the sleeve of his stupidly cute t-shirt.
“So, what’s this all been for you?” he asked. “Just sex?”
No.
“Yes!” she shouted. “Wasn’t it like that for you? Isn’t this just some hot, slutty game we’re both enjoying? Does it have to be more than that?”
He ploughed a hand through his hair, making it stick up worse than ever. “I can’t fucking believe this...”
Tabby’s tongue was so thick she could barely talk, but she tried all the same. “Can’t we just go upstairs and?—”
“NO!” Toby’s face contracted in fury. “God-fucking-dammit, Tabby, I’m not some soulless cunt who only wants to use you. I care about you. I fucking love you.”
“So, let’s go upstairs and hook up!” she said desperately. At this point, she’d take just being held. Caged from the world by Toby’s big, powerful body. “I just need?—”
“Fuck what you think you need,” he bellowed. “Jesus Christ, Noah was right. This is self-harm by proxy.”
She staggered backward on her heels. “Don’t say that!”
“It’s true. Fucking hell, I feel like a criminal. I can’t believe I’ve let myself treat you like this.”
“But I liked it!”
Toby shook his head. “It shouldn’t have gone down this way. I wish I’d only ever made love to you. I wish I’d made you see that the only way I’m ever going to be rough with you is because it’s healthy and natural and has nothing to do with you wanting to feel pain.”
“What? So I don’t deserve to get what I want?”
“Of course you do, but?—”
“So, give me what I want, and I’ll feel better!”
“I’m not trying to hold back from you,” he shouted. “I’m trying to be what you need!”
“What I need is to feel better!”
Toby yanked on his hair like he was trying to pull it out. “I can’t fucking talk to you right now.”
“Why?” Tabby demanded. “Because you can’t believe I liked the way things were? You don’t think I can handle it?”
He fixed his burning eyes on hers. “I can’t believe, after all this time, after everything we’ve been through, you’re still trying to treat me like a shitkicker. Expecting me to follow you around, doing whatever you want.”
Tabby felt like she’d been slapped. “What the fuck?”
“Why do you think I left? After we hooked up for that first time, and you took my virginity? Why do you think I left?”
“Because… you didn’t want to be friends anymore? I dunno?”
Toby laughed, the sound bouncing around his foyer so it sounded like ten Tobys were laughing at her.
“Because I knew if I’d stayed, I’d have just been some spare dick you had lying around at best. You didn’t notice me. You didn’t see me as a man. You acted like I was your fucking brother until one day you got bored enough to fuck me.”
Tabby felt like she was shrinking, melting down into the marble floor. “I…”
“Didn’t give a fuck,” Toby said, his eyes burning like coals. “You fucked me like I was some guy you met in a bar, and as soon as we were done, you pulled out your phone and invited me out to some gig with some other guy you’d also fucking slept with!”
Tabby couldn’t talk. Couldn’t think. “I didn’t…”
“I left because I fucking loved you,” he shouted. “Because I knew you were the only girl I’d ever want to marry. I left because I wanted to be the kind of man you said you wanted. To be someone you respected?—”
The dam that Tabby had felt building in her chest ever since he’d sent her that text saying he was too fucking busy to see her burst. “I already respected you, you leaking dong!”
“Bullshit. You didn’t see me as a man until I became this man.”
“What? A crypto douche?”
“Yes!”
Despite everything, Tabby laughed. “You thought I’d like you more if you became a hustle grindset guy?”
Toby lifted his face to the ceiling and roared so loud she was surprised the roof didn’t come off. “You said you wanted someone rich to take care of you! A sugar daddy! Those were your exact fucking words!”
“Mate,” Tabby said, aghast. “I was drunk!”
“Oh, don’t fucking give me that! You said you wanted someone to take care of you, and you were telling the fucking truth. If you can’t admit that now, that’s your issue.”
“My issue?” she said, pounding a fist into her chest. “My issue is that instead of talking to me, you decided to take to heart some dumb shit I said the morning of an all-night party. Do you have any idea how many illegal substances I had in my blood? So fucking many!”
“You meant it,” Toby bellowed. “You said you wanted?—”
“This is the plot of Shrek!” Tabby screamed. “And Shrek 2! And maybe Shrek 3, which I haven’t fucking seen!”
Toby’s forehead scrunched. “What?”
“You misheard me!” she yelled. “You misheard me, and then you ran off with some dumb idea about how ‘Tabby needs me to be rich’ when all I needed was for you not to run off and turn into some uber-cunt to prove a point!”
“Oh, fuck off, Tabitha.” Toby jabbed a thumb into his chest. “I didn’t mishear you. I heard you perfectly and I understood better than you do that you weren’t ever going to take me seriously. And I left because I needed you to take me seriously. Everything I’ve done since that morning, I did for you?—”
“Oh really?” Tabby interrupted. “The queue of bitches by your bed could have fooled me!”
Bright spots appeared on Toby’s cheeks. “Was I supposed to be celibate?”
“You were supposed to be my friend!”
“I didn’t want to be your fucking friend!”
The words reverberated around the foyer like a witch’s curse. Tabby’s chest went tight, her heart falling to the bottom of the world. “Fuck you. You fucking nice guy incel. Fuck you.”
“I’m sorry,” Toby said, his voice going quiet. “Seriously, I’m sorry. That’s not what I meant. I loved being your friend. I just wanted you to be my girlfriend. I wanted you to like me?—”
“I always liked you!” Tabby screamed, her voice echoing like a chorus of cockatoos. “I always cared about you! I trusted you!”
“I’m sorry,” he said, looking miserable. “But back then, I didn’t think I even could hurt you. You barely knew I was alive and?—”
“You were my best friend!” she shouted, her vocal cords tearing with the effort. “You were my best friend, and you fucking left me like everyone else does!”
Toby’s face contracted, his mouth twisting in pain. “Tabby, trust me. Trust that I loved you. I only left because I thought I needed to?—”
“We talked every day! We were so close,” she yelled, her voice cracking like shattered glass. “I loved talking to you! I loved being near you! I loved how we were together!”
I loved you, she thought, but she wasn’t stupid enough to say that. Instead, she pounded her chest like an Amazonian. “I loved that I was the one who fucked you first. I was so into what we did together. I was so. Fucking. Proud!”
She punctuated every word with a blow to her chest, her stupid naked boobs bouncing.
“Tabby, don’t!” he begged. “Please stop hurting yourself.”
“Fuck you. I’ll hurt myself if I want to! Because you know what, Toby? When we hooked up, I was already thinking, ‘Holy shit, this is the start of something amazing!’ but no. You left. You bailed and forgot me like everybody does when I’m not doing exactly what they want. My sisters. Noah. I haven’t seen my dad in two years, and I didn’t even recognise my own mother when I was tattooing her. Everyone always leaves, and I have no one.”
Toby fell to his knees, his head bent like he was praying. “I thought I was?—”
“Supposed to go become some thriller novel version of a man,” Tabby sobbed. “Well, congrats, because it was probably the only reason I fucked you again. Because you were so different from the guy I used to like, I didn’t have to think about how you screwed me over. You were different. It was night and day, and it was good!”
Toby raised his head to look at her, his eyes shining. “I was me. I’m always me.”
“Good for you,” Tabby croaked. “Because I’m done. I never want to see you again.”
She yanked up the straps of her dress and walked to her clutch on legs that felt mushy as cooked rice. Toby reached out to her as she marched toward the door.
“Don’t do this,” he said. “Trust me. We can go upstairs, we can do anything you want…”
Tabby swerved his fingers and kept right on walking. “Never again. Not you. Not anyone. Never. Again.”
Then she left. Just like Deborah did. Just like everyone did.
* * *
Tabby hadto pull over on the way home, puking onto the side of the road like the girl in The Exorcist. Passing cars honked at the drunk bitch power-spewing onto the bitumen on a Thursday night.
“Thanks,” she croaked, waving after them. “I’m not shitfaced, though. Don’t call the fucking cops.”
She cleaned the road as best she could with a bottle of water, and returned to the car feeling utterly disgusting. She drove for a minute or so when a terrible, horrible, impossible thought entered her mind. Pulling over a second time, she opened her phone and checked apps, dates, and times, her horror mounting until she could hardly breathe.
It couldn’t be possible. Not in a million years.
“Proof,” she told herself. “I need proof.”
Hands shaking, she drove to the nearest open supermarket and bought a bulk pack of tests, grateful the self-checkout kept her from having to look anyone in the eyes.
On the way back to Nix’s car, she passed a family Italian restaurant. It was a cosy little place full of boring people doing tedious things, eating marinara like they had all the time in the world.
Fuck them, she thought viciously. Fuck everything.
She pulled up a block from the studio and climbed the tree to her bedroom like Toby had done. She crept across the floorboards to the bathroom so they wouldn’t creak. No one appeared to be home and if they were, they weren’t awake. She pulled the tests from the plastic bag and opened all ten at once. One would have sufficed, but she wasn’t taking any chances. She pissed over all of them, getting urine everywhere, and laid them out on the floor. Then she sat on the closed lid of the toilet and waited.
The box said the result would take at least two minutes, but that was a lie. Within seconds, the answer was clear: double red lines across all ten blue-coloured plastic strips.
Tabby pressed her wrist into her mouth and bit down. She kept biting, digging her teeth into skin and bone, waiting for something that wouldn’t happen.
Then the door swung open, and Nicole stood in the doorway in her dressing gown.
Tabby screamed, and scooped up the pissy pregnancy tests as fast as she could. She threw them in the toilet, her hand rushing to hit ‘flush,’ but it was already too late. She’d missed a test. A test that Nicole bent to pick up. Her sister examined the strip, her face contracting like a caterpillar. The test said what all the others said; pregnant, expecting a baby, knocked the fuck up.
And Nicole opened her mouth and screamed and screamed and screamed.