Caught Red Handed

“Wait, so are you two…?” Iris asked but didn’t finish the question.

“Friends,” Tasha said, maybe too quickly.

“Sabrina, Gemma and I got close to Tasha this summer,” you said.

“Right,” Iris said, giving you both a look. More Tasha than you - clearly she was just as conflicted about hanging around her boyfriend’s ex as Tasha was hanging around her ex’s new girl. “So where is Sabrina then?” she finally asked, with the clear implication of ‘Does she know you’re here?’

“She’s with her sister back at her place,” you said honestly. “I’m giving them space to chat a bit tonight, and Sabrina said I should come support Tasha. I didn’t even know you and Mosche were going to be here, is he going on?”

“He’s… not,” Iris said, hiding the start of a grimace. Was that because she thought he should be, or at his choice of ‘job’ at all? “But it’s good for him to put in face time. Not everyone can- Never mind.”

Your stomach dropped a little because you could guess the things that Iris had been told about Tasha; the half-truths and messed up shit that would paint Tasha in a bad light between Mosche and anyone else who was jealous of her recent rise in acknowledgement in the scene.

“Not everyone can what?” Tasha bristled.

“Nothing,” Iris said, her eyes going wide. She wasn’t exactly someone who seemed comfortable with conflict.

“No, clearly you had something to say about why Mosche isn’t going on tonight and someone else is,” Tasha said. You’d heard that tone before, coming from Gemma. She was winding up.

“Tash, honey,” you said, dropping your voice to a whisper since the next comedian was starting his set. You scooped your arm around her stomach and tugged her towards the bar.

“I want to know what she thinks she knows,” Tasha said, letting you guide her but also practically snarling it as she whispered at Iris.

Mosche’s new girlfriend didn’t answer, she used the opening to scamper away, fleeing towards the washrooms.

“Fucking bitch,” Tasha spit, her anger already dissipating into hurt. You grabbed her hand and led her around to the open end of the bar again, holding tightly as she squeezed your hand back. You guided her to sit on a bar stool and you stood between her legs and wrapped her up in a hug, holding the back of her head as she hugged you back and buried her face against your shoulder. “The fucking bitch,” she whispered harshly.

“She’s young,” you said.

“I mean Mosche,” Tasha mumbled into your chest.

“... Yeah, OK, he’s kind of a bitch.”

“A soppy, soggy, stupid cunt.”

“Pick that one up from Gemma?” you chuckled.

She snorted and pulled out of your hug, wiping under her eyes and sniffing hard. “Maybe,” she grinned. “Fuck, I was in such a good mood coming off stage and that little idiot ruined it.”

“I’m sorry,” you said, taking her hands and holding them both low under the bar top. “I don’t know what I can do to help.”

“You don’t need to help, John,” she said after taking a breath. “There’s nothing you can do to erase what happened, and you and the girls already… softened the memory, and made better ones to help eclipse it. I need to be a big girl and own what I did, too. He convinced me, but I made choices. Bad ones. God, I don’t know what I fucking saw in him.”

You bit your tongue, not wanting to pile on with a ‘Neither do I.’

Tasha leaned towards you again and you hugged her. She took a few deep breaths and then shook her head. “Sabrina said you were moving in with her, right?”

“I’m doing my second run after I’m done here,” you said.

“OK, so that whole thing isn’t going to come back to bite you, at least,” she said, then shook her head. “Fuck, and we were being careful and I go and fuck it up at the finish line.”

“To be clear, Tash, I choose you,” you said. “Once I’m done moving this weekend, I’m never going to talk to Mosche again. I’ll keep talking, hugging, and listening to you forever.”

She sighed, making a comedic sad face like a little puppy. “Just talk and hugs?” she asked.

You snorted and rolled your eyes, and she broke into a grin as she bit her lower lip. “You’re heading back to the apartment to get more stuff, right? Want to get one more quick fuck in before you move out?”

You groaned softly, seriously tempted. It wasn’t like Sabrina or Gemma would be mad about it. “Yes, but also no?” you finally sighed. ‘Yes, obviously, I want you. No, because of two reasons. Reason the first - for all that I’m kinda done with him, it’s still his place and bringing you there is a dick move and I don't want to be a dick. Reason the second - I remind you that the bed belonged to a now-dead man and we don’t know how he died.”

Tasha narrowed her eyes like she was considering what you’d said. “It’s not like we think he died in the bed, do we?”

“Literally could have,” you said.

She grimaced. “Fine, I accept your reasoning and acknowledge that the no isn’t because you don’t want me.”

You leaned in, almost kissing her, and then remembering you still weren’t supposed to be doing that and backed off, making her grin.

“It’s fine anyway, I’m getting more of you tomorrow,” she said.

“You are?”

Tasha opened her mouth and then looked panicked. “Um, shit. Maybe that was supposed to be a surprise.”

“What kind of surprise?” you asked.

“A good one, I promise.”

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