Page 36 of Dream with Me

Relief fills me when I realize she’s not leaving right now, and there’s also something else. It takes me a second to realize it’s excitement.

“Will you please take me with you when you go?” I chuckle, and I’m mostly kidding. I’m sure the last thing Tillie needs is to drag a new accountant along to slow her down. She’d have to do so much to get me fully trained.

She swallows the spoonful of soup she put in her mouth, and then her expression turns serious. “Would you really consider going with me?”

I lean back in my chair and think for a second. “Actually, yeah, I would if you were serving that kind of client and running a business focused on integrity and service.”

“Oh my God! We could be business partners,” Tillie exclaims. She whips out her phone and starts swiping through it at a rapid pace. Then she stands up and comes over to my side of the booth. “Scoot over.” When I do, she climbs into the booth with me and shows me her phone.

“What am I looking at here?”

The internet page she has open shows a small house with a dilapidated sign falling down and disappearing into the overgrown yard. It’s just inside the border of Aron Falls.

“It’s where our business could be! I’ve been watching this place. It’s zoned commercial and used to be an insurance agency. It needs a lot of work inside, so the cost is relatively low, but I’m not ready to take the leap yet. Well, that and it’s not for sale yet. It had been, but then they took it off the market. I have enough money to buy it when it does go up again. It’s overwhelming thinking about getting the inside up to par.”

I watch her face for a few seconds. “You’re serious?”

“Of course I’m serious. The money doesn’t scare me. I’m afraid to dive in by myself. But if I had a partner, a friend, who was like-minded, it would be less scary and more fun.”

Tillie flips through the pictures, and she’s right. The inside is pretty much down to the studs. It looks like somebody had started to renovate it and stopped.

“It’s got a functioning bathroom, so that’s something,” Tillie says. She stands, goes back to her side of the booth, and begins eating again.

“How much would I need to come up with to go in with you?”

“I could just buy the house on my own. I guess that’s the benefit of being single with no kids and no pets. Plus, I’m a little bit of a workaholic. I have plenty of money. I’ve been able to save up over the years. But we would need to cash flow the renovations inside. So, it would probably be a while until we could be up and running.”

It doesn’t escape me that when Tillie talks about being single with no kids, it’s not with elation. Something flittered across her face, and I think it was sadness. Though she quickly masked it.

“We could focus primarily on small businesses since they’re neglected in this market and have to go to the big city to find firms that will take them. Ooh, we could even concentrate mostly on women-owned businesses. Not that we would discriminate against male-owned businesses, but we could focus our work on female small business owners in Aron Falls and Elladine and the surrounding towns. It would be so awesome and empowering.” Excitement fills me as I talk.

“Yes!” Tillie slams her fork down on the table, and several of the other diners glance our way. Her cheeks turn a rosy shade of pink, but she looks around at the surrounding tables and then loudly asks, “What? Can’t a girl be excited?”

She turns back and resumes eating like it was nothing. After we’re finished with our meals, the server brings us more coffee.

“I know we’ve only been friends for a few weeks or so, but I feel like I’ve known you forever. I promise I’m not a gossip. But I want you to know that if you want to talk about what you’re going through with your divorce, I’m here. I’ve been there.”

She looks down, no longer making eye contact with me. She’s divorced?

“You were married?”

I watch her as she takes a sip of her coffee, gripping her coffee mug tightly. The corners of her mouth turn into a frown, and then she looks up at me.

“I was married for a short time, but I’ve been divorced for way longer. Even though there were no kids involved and, well... I know it was really hard to go through. And I hated my ex by the time we got the divorce. It’s clear you don’t hate yours.”

Tillie holds my eye contact, almost daring me to challenge what she said about me not hating Troy. I don’t take the bait because, of course, I don’t hate him.

“No. I don’t hate him. He’s a good man, but... we grew apart. I felt like I lost myself to what our life was. I had hopes and dreams, and I didn’t accomplish many of them because I was so busy living our life.”

“Well, what were your hopes and dreams?”

“I wanted to get my CPA license, and I wanted to own an accounting firm or at least be a senior partner in someone else’s by the time I was thirty.”

“Did you not want kids? Or to be married?”

I feel my eyes widen. Why would she think that? “Of course, I wanted to be married and have kids. I love having kids, and I loved being married when it was good.”

Tillie’s eyes narrow somewhat. “Huh.”

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