Chapter 387

The cheers as Tasha took the stage were polite, but you, Gemma and Sabrina made up for that to the point that other people were turning in their seats to look at you.

You had gotten to the Comedy Club just as the Open Mic was starting, the trip over from the office not taking too long but the wait outside to get in slowing you down. That meant you didn’t really have a chance to find Tasha ahead of time, but it turned out she was going on early that night.

She broke into a grin as she mounted the stage, glancing in your general direction at the back of the main stage room, then took the mic and started into her bit. You’d heard it before, but it was still good and the three of you were there to support her so you upped your reactions a bit and soon the crowd was laughing with you.

Sabrina leaned towards you during one brief pause for laughter and applause and whispered in your ear as she squeezed your fingers. “By the way,” she said. “Tasha had all the guys use condoms during the gangbang thing, and she’d already gotten herself tested just in case before Gemma and I brought it up. She’s clean.”

“OK?” you whispered back. “Isn’t it a little soon?”

Sabrina gave you a look in the dark.

“So, is anyone here going through a breakup?” Tasha asked on stage. A few people gave a couple of cheers in the crowd. “Wow, OK, no need to get excited about it. What did he do, why are you breaking up?”

You got a bit of a lump in your throat, having a feeling you knew what was coming. The problem that Mosche had ridden himself into was that he wasn’t just dating an outspoken woman who could rip him a new one on social media or something - he had been dating a woman with a sharp wit and access to a microphone and a live audience. You were fairly sure he wouldn’t be there that night if he was still avoiding Tasha, but lots of people who knew him would be and his dirty laundry was about to get aired out.

Tasha did some crowd work, going back and forth with a trio of ladies. One of them was in the middle of a breakup and they were fighting over their shared dog. Tasha did a good job of keeping it light and turned it into a bit about keeping the boyfriend or the dog and which was better for a lady. Which one could protect her, which one was more willing to cuddle at night or take care of you when you were sick. That sort of stuff. After she’d milked it a bit she transitioned, crossing the stage a bit to signal she wasn’t bantering with the trio anymore.

“So, I’m also going through a breakup,” she said. “Well, I think I am. It’s hard to tell when you’re being ghosted. Has anyone been ghosted before?” There was a chorus of groans and cheers. “It’s the worst, right? Floating in a void of your own insecurities, without closure. But here’s what I’ve realised - if you’re getting ghosted, you have a simple question to ask yourself. Am I the crazy asshole? Now, for some of us that might be a hard truth - maybe I am the crazy one and I just don’t like the idea. So we go to our friends, we go to acquaintances, and we explain what’s going on and of course, no one is going to tell us we’re crazy. Well, at least to our faces, ‘cause if we are crazy who wants to be the one to say that?” She got some laughs out of that. “The flip side is obviously that we’re not crazy, so the person who is doing the ghosting has to be the one doing something wrong.