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“Pick the blue one,” Annabelle recommends, walking over. She looks from me to the dress. Then, she leans over toward Toni and in a stage whisper says, “The blue one is going to drive her batshit crazy.”

Toni laughs.

Our eyes lock.

She stops smiling.

“Let’s go with blue.”

10

Toni

The next morning, the world seems to be on fire, as it always is. Hillary is already buzzing around the office. She’s trying to get all of her paperwork done, emails sent, and meetings scheduled, but the office is chaotic. She comes into my office at nine and stands in the doorway.

“I need help,” she says.

“What can I do?”

“You can let me hire an assistant.”

I pause. Interesting. An assistant would be a wonderful choice. I don’t know what it would cost us – and I want to be fair when it comes to salary, if not outright generous – but I can talk to my accounting people and see what they have to say. I know that Hillary is right, though. We’re drowning. We’re completely in over our heads.

“Maybe.”

“I need help.”

“I know you do.”

“Have you run the financials lately?”

Only every day. And I know what Hillary is hinting at. We’re not doing as well as we wanted to. Correction: we’re not doing as well as I wanted to. While I think we could be doing better, I know that if we were in any sort of serious trouble, Mark and Anthony would let me know. They’re my accountants for a reason. I look at the basic numbers, but they do deep dives and will know exactly what’s going on.

West Mountain Software and Security is my pet project. I started this during the early years of my relationship with Jessica. She was always a huge supporter of going after my dreams, but I don’t know if she really believed my company would be able to take off. And the truth is that these days, I’m not sure where to go.

My company has clients. I’ve got a lot of clients, but I’m still small. I only have fifteen employees, while Northington Tech has hundreds. That’s why the idea of them buying me out feels so bad. On a certain level, I wonder if it would be the right thing to do.

But how do I know when it’s time to give up on a dream I’ve had for ages?

How do I know when it’s time for me to admit defeat and try to move on?

And is that something I even want to do?

“I’ll talk to our accounting people,” I say quietly. Maybe they’ll have some ideas for how we can afford another person. Who knows? I could be totally wrong with my assessment that we’re staying afloat and then some. Maybe we’re flourishing and they just didn’t have a chance to tell me yet. Yes, let’s go with that.