A raw, honest and distinctive novel that dissects the heartbreak, passion, insecurity, obsession, betrayal and joy of modern relationships. For readers of Sally Rooney, Jacqueline Maley, Diana Reid and anyone who has experienced love or heartache in equal measure.
'Do you think much about love? About how abrupt it is,' she asked. Gabby hooked her arm through his and stretched on her toes to kiss him. His mouth was dry; she tasted like rainwater. It occurred to Gordon that she was a shadow he might not be able to catch.
Two lonely lives collide on a drug-fuelled night out in Brisbane's West End. Gabby and Gordon, both lovesick and haunted by childhood wounds, find solace in each other's arms. But the passion that brings them together isn't enough in the face of insecurity, jealousy and grief.
In the wake of the intense and turbulent act of falling in - and out - of love, other relationships in their lives start to crumble. How far can Gabby and Gordon push each other, and everyone else they love, before they lose their way back?
And so the night softened at the edges. Two pills were two small miracles, and Gordon was strung out in the club bathroom, holding the cubicle door open for the girl he’d just met to squeeze in. The high was a cradle and had lured him into its deep, maternal folds. He hoped his eyes weren’t rolling around his skull. Music travelled from the dance floor to the vibrating stalls. A heartbeat Gordon felt throbbing in every muscle.
‘I thought it would be dirtier in here,’ Gabby said, avoiding the mess on the wet tiles.
‘It’s pretty dirty,’ he said, wadding up toilet paper to clean piss from the seat.
Gordon had brought her to the men’s because the line for the women’s spilled out onto the club floor and Gabby had said it wasn’t moving because the girls were all primping, snorting or fucking. ‘It’s a meeting place; it’s not about practicality,’ she explained, sitting on the toilet while Gordon leant against the cubicle wall.
The pills his brother had given him were dissolving, the chemicals frothing about in his brain. Gordon had double dropped because Adam did first and Gordon was ever the obedient baby brother. Seconds had passed, then long minutes. Nothing happened inside his body, which functioned, achingly, as it was intended. The Canadian Club warmed in his hand. Adam, high already, begged him to the dance floor, where there were too many bodies and where, at the convergence of heat and bones, time turned elastic as the pills shot through Gordon’s body like glorious tornados. Adam folded into the neon and disappeared. There was nothing but limbs and mouths. Fog machines exhaled great puffs of chemical smoke.
Gordon almost didn’t see her through the haze, not until she was in his arms. Her body, in its bends and curves, discovering his. There they were, the only people alive, and there had been the music, the darkness, his blood, his heart, all kicking, until she pulled his face to hers, not to kiss, but to shout, ‘I’m desperate for the bathroom.’
‘I might go now,’ Gabby said, washing her hands. Parched-looking men watched her from the urinals, eyeing her bare thighs as they gripped their dicks. That throbbing bass was in Gordon’s feet. It pulsed to his knees and hips.
Gabby wiped her hands dry on her minidress, her grey eyes meeting Gordon’s in the club’s grainy mirror, reflections hazy and doubled. He liked her grazed knees and chipped black-red nail polish. Liked the idea of her in the daylight: her rough movements as she arranged her fringe, her own hands feeling the softness of her stomach and breasts beneath her dress. The drugs briefly retreated and Gordon’s shy heart squeezed.
He stepped closer, offering himself as a shield. ‘Me too.’
They turned their backs to the wild of it and left the club on foot. Brisbane city glittered like smashed glass, all its concrete soaking in spit and alcohol, but their path to the suburbs was camouflaged in shadow. Gordon thought he could outrun the drugs but the tiny pills persisted, catching words before he could say them, turning them to wet paper on his tongue. Gabby lit a smoke too late. The clouds ruptured. Warm rain fell on Gordon’s eyelids, beneath his glasses. The future was a tunnel. The ecstasy was hitting.
‘Oh, my smoke,’ Gabby said and crushed the soggy cigarette into the concrete.
Gordon was lapsing in and out. His tongue was too big and he thought he’d been talking about his mother. Had that same taste in his mouth.
‘Are you in a choir?’ Gordon asked. ‘You have the voice of a choir.’
‘You’re properly fucked, aren’t you?’ Rain had turned her smiling face shiny under the moonlight. ‘Do you think much about love? About how abrupt it is.’
She hooked her arm through his and stretched on her toes to kiss him. His mouth was dry; she tasted like rainwater. It occurred to Gordon that she was a shadow he might not be able to catch. But Gabby slept in his bed that night and, as small a miracle as the pills from his brother, she left the raspberry scent from her shampoo behind.
A raw, honest and distinctive novel that dissects the heartbreak, passion, insecurity, obsession, betrayal and joy of modern relationships. For readers of Sally Rooney, Jacqueline Maley, Diana Reid and anyone who has experienced love or heartache in equal measure.
Publication Date: 30th June 2026