Nine Ball meets Lou through a friend of a friend of a friend. Usually, she makes a point of being as anonymous as is possible in her line of work; but with jobs come contacts, and more jobs, and more contacts. So she's not really surprised when a willowy woman with perfectly messy blonde hair and a motorcycle jacket sits down beside her in the park, introduces herself, and says, "Ever cracked a museum?"
She has, as a matter of fact—high art is a lucrative market—but a payoff of tens of millions is nothing to sneeze at, and she always enjoys a well-designed heist.
She does a quick sweep of Lou's footprint and double-checks with her network that she's trustworthy. Assuming Lou's partner, who Nine has yet to meet, is also solid, she'll take the job. If it goes well, she'll even offer to clean up Lou's visa history. The latest green cards seem to be in order but the earlier ones are clearly faked, and if she were to get arrested, that would get her deported immediately.
On a whole, she feels good about the job.
Then she meets Debbie Ocean, and knows immediately that she's in trouble.
She suspects that many people have had the same reaction, though probably none for the same reason. Debbie is both a criminal genius and an extremely attractive woman, and Nine is sure that she breaks noses and hearts with equal ease; but Nine could still walk away from this job, no questions asked, and Debbie isn't exactly her type. A little too much chaos lurking behind those dark eyes.
No, the danger Debbie Ocean poses to her has less to do with her chances of getting shanked or strung along, and more to do with the forest-green mark, bright and obvious, patterned across the knuckles of her right hand.
She spots it as soon as Debbie walks into the room, and the rush of adrenaline kicks in immediately, making her dizzy. Nine isn't a gambler—too much risk, too little reward, it's statistically a ridiculous hobby—but she would bet her life savings that the mark on Debbie's hand matches the mark on Veronica's forehead perfectly. The one that Nine gave her when she was born, and she touched the top of her head reverently, forgetting that her first touch would linger there forever.
Veronica is the most important person in Nine's life, always has been, always will be.
With the possible, imminent exception of a person who Debbie once punched—how else would she have the mark on her knuckles?—who has the exact same soul color as Nine.
"This what you talking about?" Nine shows Debbie the inside of the Met on her screen, and she's projecting chill, but her mind is racing. "Bunch of vases?"
Her soulmate. She tries to imagine her, but it's impossible, despite her apparently being closer than ever before. She must be a criminal, if she's close to Debbie, but Nine is sure that if she was working nearby, she'd have heard about it by now. Maybe someone Debbie used to work with? Who's no longer in the city?
Debbie fusses over her nickname—"We use real names around here," she says, in the way of someone used to getting her way—and Lou drags her off for a lover's spat.
Good. Gives Nine time to think.
She used to dream about this, when she was younger. What her soulmate would be like. How they'd meet. What kind of life they'd have together. But years went by, and she's never had much time for romance, preferring to keep most of her connections strictly professional.
She's an introvert, anyway. A Saturday night with her laptop, her sister and a blunt is just fine by her—and truthfully, she doesn't know if there's space for another person in her life at this point.
Debbie and Lou come back, and Nine distracts them by powering the warehouse on and off. It's fun, showy, proves they need her. In reality, she's still mulling the whole thing over.
She doesn't need them, that's for sure. Does she want the job? Maybe. It's the most interesting thing she's been offered in a while. Not that that's saying much.
And she doesn't even know if it's a possibility, if it would ever come up or anything, but—does she want to meet her soulmate? Does she want the chance?
She must be staring, because Lou clears her throat as she shrugs off her jacket—and there's an identical forest-green mark on her upper left bicep.
Someone close to both Debbie and Lou. It's enough to make her want to turn down the job and skip town for a few months. Not that they aren't nice and all, but this person, who is either a good friend or an archenemy of theirs—her soulmate—could be a literal murderer, or in jail, or a police officer.
There are just so many ways this could go wrong.
"So," Lou says. "What do you think?"
Nine has built her and Veronica's lives carefully. She doesn't do jobs that involve guns; she doesn't even like working with people who carry guns. She avoids hard drugs, politics and anything that requires her to disclose her real name.
Her work might be illegal, but it's rarely risky, because at the end of the day, every day, she's coming home to her sister. That's all that matters.
But it's been twelve years since their parents died. Veronica is seventeen and getting ready to go to MIT in the fall. They'll still see each other—Nine doesn't want to embarrass her, but she's going to insist on coming up at least once a month—and she's still going to keep a low profile, but maybe she can afford to take on a little risk. Just a little.
If she's going to do this, she decides, she'll have to be cautious. Subtle. Observant. Her whole career revolves around the manipulation of information, and this particular fact could be explosive.
She can't ask about the forest-green mark outright: what if her soulmate is Debbie's worst enemy, and she decides she has to take Nine out to prevent a possible betrayal, or some Romeo and Juliet kinda shit like that? And she can't let Lou or Debbie or anyone else touch her, because they'll put two and two together and it'll all be over.
No. She needs to find out without letting anyone else know, then go from there.
She takes a hit before answering.
"Sure," Nine says, blowing smoke out with the syllable. "I'm in."
She does her research before the job starts, of course. Much to her annoyance, Debbie keeps her notes on paper because she's old-school and also has missed years of technological development. Lou, though, is far more up-to-date, and records the details of the plan carefully on her phone. It's nothing too incriminating, but Nine makes a mental note to wipe all of their devices after the heist is over.
That's how she finds the list of women involved. One by one, she goes through their footprints. She's done this plenty of times before, of course, but this time she finds herself interested for both professional and personal reasons. If Internet history is a glimpse into the soul, she's going to be working with some characters.
Funnily enough, the one that holds her attention the longest is the most normal-seeming one. A woman with pale blonde hair posing with her two kids in cutesy Facebook photos, posting about green smoothies and vegan cupcakes and all that other Brooklyn shit, except she's further out, in the suburbs. Nine almost begins to think that Lou must have had the wrong name, because there's no way this woman has any kind of criminal skills. She's probably never even jay-walked.
But then she hacks deeper and deeper, and irregularities start popping up. The woman—Tammy—seems to have no employment record after her kids were born. So she's a stay-at-home, yeah? But her kids have been registered at childcare centers since they were very young, and according to her electric bill, she's out of the house most of the day. Nine checks her YMCA membership, her credit card, even the local Alcoholics Anonymous groups. Nothing.
Then she goes back to Lou's notes. Tammy's the fence.
A memory sparks, somewhere in the back of her mind. A police report she read a year or two ago, about the hijacking of trucks along the New Jersey turnpike, and the suspicion that it was connected to the biggest stolen goods operation east of the Mississippi.
She does a bit more digging, and though there's nothing strong enough to serve as evidence, she's pretty well convinced by the end of the day.
Nine stares into the open, smiling face of the pretty woman in the Facebook photos. She has to hand it to Tammy: she's impressed.
The whole crew arrives in the warehouse. Nine sits back in her beanbag and watches from behind her sunglasses, mentally matching faces to histories, noting body language and nervous gestures, checking for concealed knives. Not that she thinks Lou would let anyone start shit, but it's always good to be careful.
Constance is more serious than she'd imagined given the number of cat videos she watches on YouTube; she's funny and brash, but also watchful, never fully relaxed. Amita is sarcastic, even cutting, hardly the naive princess of the Disney movies she favors. Rose is—well, exactly as frazzled as she'd pictured, given her Google searches about deportation and tax fraud and what sewing supplies might be available in jail.
The answer: very few. Fashion design lends itself well to weaponry.
Tammy, though, is somehow both exactly and nothing like what she'd imagined. She looks just like her photos, sweaters and all, but the effect is far more imposing than Nine had ever thought a suburban white lady could be. She's quick, smart, commanding, as befits her crime boss work, but she's also on the phone with her kids constantly, helping to solve their small problems and soothe their whining. And on top of that, she's dryly funny, with a deadpan that makes Nine snort involuntarily.
Typically, when Nine is hiding in a corner with her shades and her laptop, she's rendered almost invisible; and she thinks she's been pretty subtle, watching Tammy move around the space, talking, moving boxes, taking notes. So she's surprised when Tammy hangs up with the kids (after several rounds of "I love you, sweetheart. Yes, I'll see you soon. I'll talk to you soon. I love you"), heaves a sigh, and sits down on the couch opposite her.
"Sorry for all the noise," Tammy tells her. "The kids are at the separation anxiety stage."
"I don't mind," Nine says. And she doesn't: she remembers Veronica when she was little, how she'd cling to her. How much worse it got when she found out their parents weren't ever coming back. How it used to annoy her, but now that Veronica's going to be leaving her, she thinks she's starting to understand.
"Do you have kids?" Tammy asks, then immediately covers her mouth. "Sorry. You don't have to answer that. I'm used to making small talk with women in the grocery store in Buttfuck, Nowhere."
Nine laughs out loud. "It's cool."
Part of her wants to tell her—to say, no, but she effectively raised her younger sister, so she knows what it's like. But she's not supposed to be making friends here.
Tammy looks at her for a moment longer, then smiles and leans back on the sofa, tucking her legs up underneath her. She closes her eyes, and her whole face relaxes.
And there it is, the most surprising thing about Tammy: she's absolutely gorgeous.
Preparations for the heist start coming together. Nine does her job, observes the others, doesn't get too close. Everyone is highly professional, so it's not like they all become best friends immediately, but as they settle in, routines develop. One of which is Thursday night drinks.
It's Lou's night off from the club—though Nine knows that technically as the owner she never has to be there, it seems like she prefers to keep an eye on things in person—and the first week that they're all living there, she comes home on Thursday night with a case of liquor bottles and a twinkle in her eye.
"Shots, anyone?" she says, already pouring them out. "We have vodka, tequila, whiskey, rum…"
"What are we, teenagers?" Amita complains, but it's barely out of her mouth before Constance is beside Lou and downing one, then two shots of vodka.
"Is that the watered-down bottle?" Tammy calls from the couch.
Debbie sips from a shot glass. Then she grins wide. "Nope. The good shit."
In the end, they all end up doing shots, even Nine. She goes for the rum, drinks a double shot down in one. Notices Tammy watching her swallow.
And yeah, okay, if this was any other place and time, she'd have been on that days ago. Tammy's exactly the kind of put together that makes Nine want to take her apart: she looks good with her hair done perfectly, wool sweaters over collared shirts, but Nine is sure that she looks even better undone. And she wonders what it would take to get her to that point—what would she have to do to make her moan? Swear? Beg?
However. Not only can she not fuck Tammy, she can't flirt, either. No touching. That's the rule.
So Nine looks away, deliberately, and retreats into her usual beanbag, laptop perched on her legs. She's a little buzzed, but keeps working, only half-listening to the conversation around her.
Which is why she doesn't hear the debate over picking a game until everyone is settled around her and Debbie's saying, "If you're quiet, you'll learn the rules so much faster."
Nine looks up. Debbie is sitting in Lou's lap, sharing the couch with Rose and Tammy, and Amita's in an armchair with a margarita. Constance is sprawled on the floor.
"Okay, mom, I'll be good," Constance mocks. Debbie rolls her eyes, and Lou looks at her fondly.
"All right, then," Lou starts. "It's nothing fancy, just a take-off of Truth or Dare. Basically, the way it works is: whoever's turn it is gets a truth and a dare from the others. You can either do the truth or dare, or you can take a shot. If you do both, the people who gave you the truth and the dare have to do shots instead."
"Oh, I got this," Constance says. "Y'all are going down."
"All right," Tammy says. "You're first, then."
Nine keeps working amidst the whooping as Constance shares the details of her most recent fuck and prank-calls her mom's restaurant, then laughs uproariously as Rose and Debbie each drink shots of whiskey. Lou tells the story of how she and Debbie met, which makes Amita misty-eyed, and Debbie gives Lou a lap dance with absolutely no hesitation whatsoever.
"Your first mistake was thinking I hadn't done that before," she says, winking at Amita, who pretends to gag.
Then it's Rose's turn. She looks around at them all nervously.
"Rose, Rose, Rose," Constance says, in a tone that would be menacing if she wasn't drunk. "Dare: act out your favorite sex position, on the person of your choice."
Rose squeaks.
"Truth," Tammy says. "Have you ever designed lingerie, and if so, for who?"
Blushing, but looking relieved, Rose tells them about a model she had a fling with, for whom she designed a set of brilliant magenta, barely-there nightwear.
"I hope you got to take them off her, when they were done," Lou says.
A smile curves Rose's lips, and she winks. They're all giggly drunk, and Nine looks up just in time to see Tammy burst into laughter and lean into Rose, placing a hand on her bare knee.
And then time stands still.
Because when Tammy removes her hand a moment later—Constance is already chanting her name, and Debbie has perked up, mischief clear in her eyes—there's a forest-green smudge on Rose's knee.
Nine's green.
She takes a hit off her blunt just to have something to do with her hands, which are suddenly shaking. Because holy fucking shit, it's Tammy.
Tammy's green is on Debbie's knuckles. Another realization hits her, and she groans internally. How could she be so dumb? Debbie and Lou's red is clearly etched on Tammy's cheekbone and hand, she noticed it the first time she saw her, and wondered at it—face marks aren't so common. Stupid, that's what she is. She should've figured this out days ago.
Nine feels dizzy, her sudden proximity to this woman who is supposedly the love of her life combining with the weed and rum to make her feel weightless and ecstatic, so happy she could scream. Because Tammy is beautiful, probably one of the most attractive people she's ever met even with the prep-school look, and she's brilliant and skilled and running a massive criminal operation so under the radar that even Nine hadn't heard of her until this job, and she doesn't carry a gun, Nine is sure she knows how to fight but she isn't a murderer or a cop or anything, and she's Nine's soulmate.
For so long, her heart has been a tiny island only big enough for her sister. She has a few friends, people she trusts, but no one she would say she loves; she fucks, doesn't date, never brings people home. Her soulmarks are few and far between: Veronica's opalescent sheen on her fingertip, her mother's mahogany-brown on her ribs and father's honey-amber on her back, a couple of friends and lovers patterned on her legs and arms.
And now she has a soulmate.
She gets exactly three seconds to be over the moon, until:
"Tim Tam," Debbie says. "Dare: send nudes to the last three people you texted."
"I can't do that!" Tammy protests. "My kids are numbers one and two!"
Oh. Right.
The kids.
The adorable kids, the perfect husband, the white picket fence and house in the suburbs.
A rock plummets into Nine's stomach and stays there.
Tammy's taken. Not just taken, she's married and shacked up and responsible for young lives. It's somewhat unusual to marry outside of soulmarks, but people do it and are perfectly happy.
Nine might be a criminal, but she's not an asshole. She's not going to break up a family, a whole life built together, just because Tammy may or may not be her soulmate.
(She is. Nine knows that without a shadow of a doubt. But still).
Tammy's telling some story and everyone is laughing, but Nine can't hear anything over the absolute pounding clarity of the thoughts running through her head.
She's found her soulmate, and they can't be together.
Yet. Maybe in twenty years. But not now.
And, moreover, she still can't get close to any of the others, because she can't risk them touching her, and she can't want to tell them anything. Even though she suspects it's too late, because despite only having known these people for a week, she's voluntarily sitting through a game of Truth or Dare. Because she thinks Constance and Veronica could be best friends, because Amita makes her chai in the mornings and Lou mixes her rum punches at night, because Debbie plays a lot of Internet chess and so does Nine and she wants so badly to beat her ass, because she'd kill a man for Rose's sake, because Tammy is her literal fucking soulmate.
She can't want this. Can't want a family.
Amita's just finished propositioning some dude over Tinder, and drops her phone on the table dramatically. "Nine! You're up, babe," she says, tucking her legs underneath her and gesturing with her drink.
"I'm not playing," Nine says automatically. She stares at her computer screen as if she can make the whole situation—the game, the crew, her current devastating heartbreak—disappear.
"Course you are," Constance says. "Truth: what's your real name?"
Nine scoffs, despite her misery.
"Dare," Lou says, and Nine lifts her eyes from the screen briefly to give her an Et tu, Brute glare. "Fuck, marry, kill the three people to your left."
Nine sighs, but looks anyway. "Easy," she says. "Fuck Constance, marry Lou, kill Debbie."
Constance's cheer of "Hell yeah" is drowned out by Debbie going, "Hey, wait a minute!" Lou just smirks appreciatively.
"You're the most dangerous," Nine explains patiently, and Debbie looks rather pleased. "And Lou has a steady source of relatively legal income, so she could provide for me if necessary."
"Plus you think I'm hot," Constance says, with a winning smile.
"Sure," Nine says, eyes back on the screen. "Whatever helps you sleep at night."
The game moves on, and after a few minutes, she closes her laptop and stands up, mumbling, "Need another drink" under her breath. She goes to the kitchen for a few minutes so it looks like she's doing something, then pads quietly up the stairs to her room. The noise from the living room is raucous, and she doubts anyone notices.
Nine closes the door behind her, and sighs. Without letting herself think too much, she strips off, crawls into bed and puts on Netflix. Something mindless and happy, to help her fall asleep.
She cries a little in the dark and quiet of her room until the combination of weed and exhaustion overtakes her, and she falls into a dreamless sleep.
The next day, Nine decides that this changes nothing. She was never planning to get close to any of them. If she pursued this—this soulmate thing—it could turn her whole life upside down. She should be grateful to get the money and get out. It's just a job.
She doesn't even tell her sister, even though she tells her everything else. Debbie might have sworn them all to secrecy, but Veronica always comes first, and besides, it's good to have a back up plan. She's a genius, is her sister, and the time might come when they need her on their side.
It's not that she doesn't think she'd be sympathetic. Veronica's always liked the idea of soulmates, and she might be eight years younger but she has the emotional intelligence of a grown ass woman, probably even more so than Nine herself.
No. The whole thing just—feels shameful, is all. How much she wants someone to love.
It's lonely, holding this close to her chest. But Nine is accustomed to loneliness. Fuck, she thrives on it.
She can handle one more disappointment.
Work and weed keep her pretty well distracted most of the time. She doesn't have to interact directly with Tammy much; some days she doesn't even see her. That helps—lifts the weight on Nine's chest, just a bit—right up until the next time they're in the house at the same time, and a jolt goes through her entire body when she lays eyes on Tammy. Like she's fucking thirteen years old again.
Avoiding the others is easier than expected. Other than family dinner, as Constance has taken to calling it, she's not required to be present unless she's working, and even then she often communicates by phone. She sits in the corner, doesn't talk much. She's not sure if they think she's aloof or just a loner, but they respect her need for physical space, which is a blessing.
The one time Rose tries to touch her face, saying something about a singer she resembles, she jerks back and feels her jaw set, angry; but before she can untangle her complicated emotions and try to explain, Rose is already apologizing, voice soft.
"I should've asked. Sorry, love," she says, and Nine looks for resentment or condescension in her eyes, but all she sees is sincerity. She just nods, jaw still tight, and they move on.
It's—nice. The way they take care of her.
Additionally, of course—and she really tries not to be bitter about this, but it's tough—the others are distracted by their own soulmates. Lou and Debbie might be head bitches in charge when it comes to running heists, but when they're focusing on each other, it's like there's little cartoon hearts floating around their heads. She's seen Debbie tear up and Lou blush, and they're not even intimidating anymore.
Not that she would admit that they ever were. She has a reputation to maintain.
Meanwhile, Amita and Constance finally got together—Nine saw that coming like a million years ago but whatever—and now they're so wrapped up in each other that Constance has forgotten to act like an annoying younger sister to Nine, which shouldn't hurt but kind of does. And it's not like she and Amita were close, but they did spend a lot of time rolling their eyes at each other when the others were being ridiculous, because they're like the two most sane people on the whole team.
To be fair, she has no real idea what's up with Rose—she hides in her room and runs around like a chicken with its head cut off and Nine loves her but man, she's weird—though she's guessing that gay panic figures into it somewhere, because hello, doesn't it always?
She is happy for them all. Somewhere. Deep down.
Assuming there's a part of her that's deep enough down that it can forget about watching Tammy around the apartment, marveling at her capability, her intelligence, the way she juggles Debbie and the heist and her kids and her own massive criminal empire without so much as a hair coming loose. The way she looks in those skirts, the way she might look out of them. The way Nine's heart skips a beat when she sees her, and the way Tammy sometimes looks at her as though she has the same effect on her—like a shiver goes down her spine every time their eyes meet.
If she can forget about that, in some small corner of her body, then yes. She can be happy for Lou and Debbie and Amita and Constance and everyone else who gets their perfect honeymoon ending.
They play Truth or Dare again the night before the heist. They're all jittery despite their preparations, maybe because of them; there's nothing left to do but wait, and Nine knows that if they were left to their own devices right now, half of them would get caught up in their own heads and go crazy, and half of them—well, maybe just Constance and Lou—would externalize the stress and probably end up breaking something.
So Debbie gets out the shot glasses, and Rose makes up some weird but tasty punch, and they all get drunk as fast as they can without guaranteeing awful hangovers tomorrow.
Nine's got her laptop open as always, playing chess on autopilot, and trying to pretend to herself that she's nervous about the job, because it's easier than thinking about how beautiful Tammy looks with wisps of hair curling around her face, cheeks glowing and eyes warm. Or about how empty her apartment is going to be with Veronica gone, how still. The pool place and her usual work will keep her busy, but she'll be so, so alone.
From watching movies about college dorms and sororities and everything, she thought she'd hate that kind of communal living. How noisy and chaotic and messy it was. But she's been living with six other women for a month now, and it is quite possibly the happiest she's ever been.
"Nine!" Constance yells.
"What!" Nine yells back.
"Dare: do a shot off someone's tits!"
Much as she would love to, it's out of the question. She briefly wonders if anyone's ever gotten a soulmark on their tongue before. Probably. She'd look pretty silly, having a green tongue for the rest of her life.
It'd be worth it.
"Truth," Tammy says. "What do you want most?"
The first thought that comes to her mind is: you. Which is dangerous on so many levels, she doesn't even want to think about it.
She opens her mouth, and blurts: "A family."
They make eye contact, and Tammy nods at her like she understands, like she can see inside of Nine's head and knows how many times she's thought about Tammy and her, about mothering Tammy's kids, about Tammy bonding with Veronica, about holding a little baby, a baby of their own—
Nine reaches blindly for a shot, tips it down. "Rose," she slurs. "You're up."
All things considered, she has maybe the most chill job out of anyone on the day of the actual heist. She's the only one not pretending to be someone else, and while she is in charge of monitoring everything and coordinating the handoff, she can lounge back in the van, paint her nails, smoke a blunt.
There's the moment of stress when the busboys are chatting, but Tammy resolves that, and then it's just the countdown as Lou and Debbie steal more shit and Amita makes jewelry, and Nine gets ready.
Her makeup's already done, so she just puts on the red dress that fits her perfectly, tries not think about Tammy picking out this dress for her—maybe thinking about her in this dress, maybe thinking about other things, too—sweeps her hair back, and heads into the event of the year.
Constance slips her the diamond hand piece as she enters through a back door, and she spends just a few minutes looking around. Despite having access to every camera in the museum, she wanted to experience the atmosphere for herself. Put on a pretty dress, be the belle of the ball, etc. The lights are sparkling and bright, and it's intoxicating, seeing and being seen. She's so used to hiding, she almost forgot what that was like.
She's still an introvert, though, and her job depends on anonymity, so she doesn't wait around for people to start taking photos or asking who she is. She finds the front staircase, begins descending it—
—and then her eyes find Tammy's, at the bottom of the stairs.
Or more accurately, her eyes find Tammy's, which are currently sweeping down from her hair to her lips to her tits to her hips, and she knows she looks good but god, the hunger in Tammy's eyes. The way she looks up at her, hands clenching at her sides, like it's taking all of her willpower not to reach for Nine and dip her into a movie-star kiss.
And Nine is good at hiding her feelings, deliberately hasn't added up the clues for a long time, but she's not in the habit of lying to herself. She knows that Tammy has been watching her, in the quiet moments of Lou's house, because sometimes she looks up and catches her, and they hold eye contact for a few seconds too long. She makes Tammy laugh a deep-belly laugh, which no one else except Debbie can do. Tammy relaxes around her.
So yes, okay, this soulmate thing. It's real. They want each other. Tammy wants her.
But that doesn't make it okay to break up Tammy's family. Tammy might be attracted to her, might even like her—she refuses to think that Tammy might love her, it's too soon, it's too much—but she has kids, a happy, stable marriage.
Nine won't be the one that takes that away from her.
Back when she'd been deciding whether to take the job and risk finding her soulmate, and asked herself, What's the worst that can happen?, she'd imagined getting shot, or thrown in jail.
She didn't think about falling in love.
Amita and Constance, she saw coming from miles away. Rose and Daphne? That catches her a little off-guard.
It makes sense once she thinks about it, she supposes—the artist and her muse. Classic.
And it completes them, in a way that no one fully understands except for her. Not only are they Ocean's Eight, the team that pulled off the most audacious heist in history, but they're a houseful of soulmates, of couples who would not have found each other were it not for everyone else. In a way, they're all soulmates. They belong together.
But she doesn't. Or she can't. Not really. Not yet.
Tammy is going to leave, and she has to, too.
She resolves not to tell anyone until after everything else is settled, because everyone's spirits are high and she doesn't want to be the one to pull them down. So she gets a few more weeks with them while Becker is trapped and arrested. A few more weeks of Truth or Dare, family dinners, sitting in the corner and watching everyone, before she leaves for good.
And then the thing is finally, actually done. Daphne's moved into Rose's room with her. Becker is going to jail. The money is secured in offshore accounts, millions and millions for each of them.
They did it.
The party goes on all night. Lou breaks out even fancier bottles, Nine contributes some really good weed, Debbie picks the records, and they all get fucking trashed. They play party games until they can't focus anymore, then they switch to Spin the Bottle—which Nine has the presence of mind to withdraw from; she just watches hazily, more than a little turned on, while all her friends kiss each other—and then, when Lou and Debbie get distracted by each other's faces again, Daphne and Amita put on Britney Spears and dance around crazily, knocking things over and laughing like maniacs.
At some point someone puts on a Disney movie. Nine isn't surprised that Amita and Lou and Rose cry, but it shakes her to her fucking core when Constance sheds a tear.
Around five a.m., Nine stirs suddenly in her beanbag, and wakes up to find the party over. Debbie and Lou are asleep curled up on the couch together, while Constance and Amita have just passed out on the floor. She vaguely remembers Rose and Daphne going off to bed earlier. Tammy probably did too, she figures.
She's exhausted and a little buzzed, and she should go to bed, too, but for some reason she feels wide awake. Warm and sort of excited and good. She looks out the window. The sky is pale gray with pre-morning light and completely clear. Perfect for watching the sun rise.
Nine makes her way up to the roof, sits in a lawn chair. The air's cool, a little breezy, so she peels off her sweatshirt to feel it on her bare shoulders. Stares out over the city as red washes over the horizon and paints the sky a fiery orange, sending streaks out to the fading night.
Just as the sun's about to rise—she can see it peeking over the trees, right there—she hears a voice from the door.
"Couldn't sleep?"
Nine doesn't even turn her head, just lets the smile curve the corners of her lips. "Nah. Too beautiful out here for sleep."
Tammy moves from the door onto the porch, and stands beside Nine for a second, gazing out. "You're so right."
Then she sits down on the arm of her chair, slinging her arm around Nine's shoulders casually; and Nine is too tired and high and happy to remember why that's a bad idea, so she leans into her side.
"Do you do this often?" Tammy asks.
"No," Nine says. "Just sometimes when I want to think a little."
"What are you thinking about now?"
"Nothing," Nine says, honestly. "Just feeling happy."
"Yeah," Tammy says. Nine can hear her smiling. "Me too."
They watch the sun rise in silence, until it's lifted far enough into the sky that a whole rainbow is there, tracing pink orange gold into blues and purples. Lighting up the city.
Then Tammy shakes herself, lifting her arm up and stretching. "Well, I should probably—"
And it's like a bolt of lightning hits Nine: the silence of Tammy seeing the mark on Nine's shoulder and the mark on her inner bicep, and putting two and two together. The reason she shouldn't have let Tammy touch her. Fuck. Fuck.
"Fuck," Nine says out loud, looking up at Tammy, and Tammy looks down at her and her eyes are darker than she's ever seen them, dark and determined and—
—and then suddenly Tammy has slid off the arm of the chair and into her lap, straddling her, and she's got one hand on Nine's shoulder where she's left a forest-green mark (a soulmark, from Nine's soulmate) and the other hand in her hair, and her lips are so soft and warm and sweet that Nine melts into her, wrapping her arms around her, holding her close.
They stay like that for a while, kissing until they can't breathe, then resting their foreheads together, then kissing more. The sun is rising in the sky and Nine has the love of her life in her lap and everything is absolutely perfect. She never wants it to end.
Finally, though, Tammy breaks away for air and buries her face in Nine's neck, and giggles. Nine thinks it's probably the most endearing sound she's ever heard.
"I just—" Tammy says, still laughing against her skin. "I've been wanting to do that for such a long time, and you're—we're—"
"Yeah," Nine says softly. "Me too."
Tammy hears something in her tone, and raises her head to look her in the eye. Nine can practically see the gears working in her head. Damn Tammy's criminal instincts.
"Wait a minute," Tammy says, eyes narrowing suspiciously. "You don't sound surprised. You didn't—did you know?"
Nine considers lying, but it's like six a.m. and they just made out for what felt like years, and she's so tired of hiding. "Yeah. I did."
"Why didn't you say anything?"
"I—" Her voice catches in her throat, and she swallows hard. "Well, you're—married."
Tammy smiles at her. "Yeah, but—"
"No, you're—you're married, and you have kids, and you're happy. You have such a good life and I didn't want to ruin that for you, you deserve that, you didn't—"
"Nine, listen—"
"No, I—" Nine braces against the arms of the chair and makes to stand up. Tammy scoots off of her, and then Nine's looking down at her, and every bone in her body is resisting what she's about to say but she has to say it. "I shouldn't have done that. I'm sorry. I'm gonna go."
And Nine turns to go back inside, but before she can move an inch, Tammy is there in front of her again, brandishing her left hand in her face.
Her ring finger is bare.
"For a hacker, you're not very observant," Tammy says quietly.
"What?"
"I stopped wearing my ring weeks ago."
"But—why?"
"I'm getting a divorce," Tammy says, and all of the air leaves Nine's body, just like that. She actually has to sit down on the arm of the chair to catch her breath. Then Tammy steps closer so that she's standing between Nine's legs, and wow, that is really not helping her get a hold of things.
"We were too young when we got married," Tammy says. "We don't love each other; we're better off as friends. I didn't tell anyone except Debbie because it felt, I don't know, private."
Gently, she places her hands under Nine's shoulders and tugs her up until they're standing chest to chest, lips barely a breath apart.
"You're the only one I want," Tammy whispers against her mouth, and then they're kissing again, and Nine isn't letting go of her again, not now, not ever.