Number Nine

Chapter One: I Want You All To Myself

Never mind the fact that he got her random presents that cost hundreds of dollars. Never mind the fact that one of her Christmas presents was literally first class plane tickets home to North Carolina. Never mind the fact that he held her hand constantly, cuddled with her under a blanket when they watched movies, or that he insisted she sleep in his bed with him holding her close whenever she stayed over.

Those were all normal friend things. Or normal Tim things. Or normal guy things. She wasn't sure. Either way, no matter what anyone said, there was no way in hell his feelings towards her were more than platonic.

This was, of course, totally fair. It was also most definitely for the best. It hurt like a bitch, though.

But honestly, it would never work. Zendaya was super nice and even had a boyfriend, but like. How could anyone compete with Zen-fucking-daya, even if all romantic and/or sexual interactions were in a work context?

Zendaya had become a friend at Tim's twenty-sixth birthday party, yeah, but she was also a source of insecurity for Lea.

She was everything Lea wasn't. Zendaya was tall. Lea was 5'¾" of an inch on the best of days. Zendaya had perfect skin. Lea was covered in freckles and turned lobster red if she spent more than an hour and a half in the sun without SPF 70. Zendaya had a team of people managing her hair. Lea was lucky her dark red curls didn't frizz up every day. Zendaya was skinny. Lea was... well. Not. She couldn't even afford a bra in her size and had subsequently been wearing the same two since she was fifteen.

In any case, Tim had girls like that at his disposal, and she knew for a fact he had a long history of casual hook-ups and flings. They'd never work. It really was for the best that his feelings for her were strictly platonic.

There was one more minor reason that things must remain platonic between them. Well, okay. There were several reasons, but they were interconnected. It all started when, a few weeks into their friendship and she was hurdling head-first into romantic feelings territory and fast, she'd been hit with what she thought of as the Big Reveal.

"Your what?" Lea had sputtered at him over the pizza he'd ordered.

"Huh?" he paused in his story. "I was just saying that my wife—"

She dropped the pizza outright then. "Your wife," she repeated back to him.

He stared at her for a few seconds, then seemed to recall something. "Shit, right, I haven't told you, huh?"

"Apparently not," she said uncomfortably, her appetite completely gone now. "You're, uh... you're married?"

He nodded. "Few years now."

"I'm confused," she confessed. "You asked me out at first. You said it was a date."

Tim smiled at her indulgently, and her heart thudded in her chest. She wished it wouldn't, though, because he was fucking married, apparently.

"We're polyamorous, sweetheart," he told her gently. "We both have plenty of girlfriends, some of them shared." He paused. "Plus a few boyfriends on her part."

She'd heard of that. She couldn't imagine the appeal of wanting more than one person at a time. She didn't get why he did, and she was insanely jealous of the girls he was with and most especially his motherfucking wife, but to each their own, she supposed.

"You said girlfriends," she observed. "As in, like. Plural. More than one. Multiple."

He nodded.

"How, uh. How many are we talking here?"

He thought for a moment. "Eight, I think? Yeah, eight."

"Eight?" she squeaked out. He was dating eight girls? In addition to his wife?