Chapter 8
Libby
“BINGO!”
Joni shouts from our little table at the Green Cup.
It’s a cute little spot near Beacon Street that serves coffee in the mornings, wine in the evenings and has the humidity of Costa Rica because they sell plants year-round.
Apparently wine bar slash plant stores are a new thing Joni found on social media, and they are now her favorite things.
Joni loves wine. She’s also got a green thumb.
“I love these places!” she grins as she dances back to the table. “Look! I won a succulent. I think I’m going to name him George.”
“I thought your last succulent’s name was George.”
“That was Jorge. Big difference. Also, the dog may or may not have eaten him.”
“Banjo eats houseplants?” I ask.
Joni plops back down in her seat and reaches for her wine glass. “Banjo is a Great Dane. He eats everything.”
Normally this would make me laugh. But tonight, my mind is elsewhere. That elsewhere being my shop, which, unfortunately, is occupied by the newest bane of my existence.
“You seem down. What’s up?” Joni asks and laughs.
“Down. Up. I’m funny. But for real girl, you’ve hardly touched your wine and it’s girls night.
I am child free! That includes my own kids, the kids in my classroom.
All of it. Tell me what’s going on in that pretty little head of yours.
You look great by the way. Yellow doesn’t work for a lot of people. ”
I offer a halfhearted smile at her compliment. Yellow is one of my favorite colors. I’d wear it whether it looked good on me or not. But even the sunniest of all colors couldn’t lift my mood right now.
“Can I tell you a secret?” I ask, reaching for my glass. I’ve spent the last thirty minutes only nursing my chardonnay because the recent events have me questioning whether or not I can stomach it.
“Am I your best friend?” she asks, setting up her next bingo card, something else I haven’t touched.
Joni doesn’t get away from the house and kids much.
It’s not that her husband has a problem with it.
But between her teacher hours and his mechanic hours (he works out of a shop and out of his own garage) and their four energetic minions, they hardly have time to pee let alone go out.
“The one-night stand man…wasn’t just a one-night stand.”
“Holy shit you fucked him again?” she gasps and leans in, grin wide and eyes wider.
“What? No,” I shake my head. “I mean…I’ve seen him since that night.”
“Okay…” she trails the word out.
I sigh. “I don’t know how to explain this other than to just say it.”
“You’re in love with him,” she stamps the statement while stamping her new card. She’s already on her way to a second bingo, which wouldn’t be unusual for her.
“What?! Also no! It turns out, his name is not Jax.”
“Sounds about right. I hate to say, and maybe I should’ve said it before I tossed you into the cesspool that is the dating app world, but a lot of people lie.”
“No shit,” I mumble, sipping more consistently on my wine now.
“I mean I wouldn’t know from experience of course because I have been with the same lovely man since high school,”
“Jordan is a good guy. You’re lucky.”
“Like I said, lovely. But I do know through friends at work that dating app men like to blur the truth, so to speak. They lie about names, age, how much money they make, how tall they are, how…endowed…they are. But lucky for you, you were only looking for an ONS. Unless you weren’t.”
“No, I was. And that’s the thing. His name isn’t Jax. It’s Dax. Dax Hemingway,” I enunciate his last name hoping she will catch on. Joni is a schoolteacher, I would assume she knows about books.
“That’s romantic,” she waggles her eyebrows while marking off more spaces on her bingo board.
“One more to go. All I need is a philodendron and I’ll win…
a philodendron. I have to keep those in the macrame hangers in the kitchen because Elias tried to eat one recently and it turns out they’re very toxic.
Can you believe I have to tell my almost seven-year-old son that he can't eat the house plants? He just sighed and said, but mom, I’m a dinosaur.
I told him next time to pretend you’re a carnivorous dinosaur and eat your dinner for once. ”
Despite the rabbit trail in the conversation, it makes me smile. Though it’s a bittersweet smile. Joni and I have been best friends since fifth grade. She has seen my whole life splay out in front of us, messy details and all. We both had the same lists growing up of what we wanted.
Find a boy.
Marry the boy.
Have babies with the boy.
Of course, my life also consisted of running my parents bookstore until I could pass it down to one or more of the said babies.
Joni has checked off all the things on that list. I…
have not. I completed steps one and two when I met Shane in college.
I was an English major, he was a kinesiology major.
We met at a coffee shop while I was studying, sipping on a caramel latte, and he was ordering a kale fruit smoothie, heavy on the kale and protein powder, light on the fruit.
Too much sugar in strawberries, he would later say many, many times in our marriage.
I should’ve known that a man who orders grass smoothies and says things like ‘your body will thank you!’ wasn’t a good match for me.
Maybe he should try eating a philodendron.
“It’s not romantic,” I say, hopping back into the conversation. “His name is Daxton Hemingway…”
Joni looks up at me.
“Of Hemingway Books…”
She blinks.
“Oh. Oh! Holy crap on cracker. You went out with the CEO of Hemingway Books?! Damn girl! BINGO!”
I wait for Joni to victory dance her way up to the bar for her second prize of the night, some kind of lily. She grabs another bottle of wine and makes her way back to me, refilling our glasses.
“Okay, sorry. Go on,” she presses. “You hooked up with Hemingway. That’s legit.”
“It’s legitimately a problem,” I state.
“How so?”
“Because Hemingway books is the company Kai signed my store over to.”
Joni shakes her head and sets her glass down. “Wait, wait, wait. So, your douchy brother, who I have never liked by the way, actually followed up on his threat to sell your cute little bookstore, the store your parents started, and we grew up in and I take my own children too weekly?!”
I nod and take a gulp of my wine.
“Damn. That man is savage. So anywho, now you’re telling me that you hooked up with a man who said his name was Jax, but it was actually Dax as in Daxton Hemingway of Hemingway Books and that’s the company that is ripping your store from your hands?”
“Yep,” I say, taking another gulp.
“Jesus, girl. I don’t know if that’s good luck or bad luck.”
“It’s bad,” I answer, setting my glass down and reaching for the bottle. “Because now, I have to see him every day and it’s just a reminder. A reminder that he is ruining my life one bookshelf at a time. You know he wants to get rid of story time? Who the fuck gets rid of story time!?”
“Like a said, a savage. I’m a first-grade teacher and even on my worst days I look forward to story time.
There’s just something magical about it.
And as someone who has had 4 natural births, which by the way are anything but natural, and changed more diapers than the octomom– I’d put actual money on it– I don’t believe in magic. ”
I nod. The wine is turning my head to fuzz and my heart to Jell-O.
Maybe one more glass will numb it. “The worst part is, every time I see him, every time he walks in the building or looks at me or says something stupid about the way my store is set up, all I can think about is how epic the sex was. And how sweet he was. It was…unreal…how that man treated me in bed, Joni. Which makes me think it was all a lie.”
“Not necessarily,” she argues, snitching an olive off the mini charcuterie we ordered. “Sometimes men can be one way in the bedroom and another way during business hours.”
That annoys me. “So, which is real?”
“Both.”
It makes no sense. And it pisses me off. I think Joni can tell because she moves the Bingo cards aside and leans in. I don’t think they’d let her get another bingo anyways. Her winning streak seems to be pissing off some of the other tables.
“Listen. I know you can’t just forget about it. Not if the sex was that good–”
“So good…”
“And you have to see him every day. But can’t move on.
Maybe find someone else to go out with. Someone who understands what a one and done really is.
If you can’t walk of shame away from it, it’s not an ONS, you know?
Or hell, maybe find someone to actually date.
Even if it’s slow or casual. It might be good for you. ”
I shake my head. “I don’t know. Jax…I mean Dax…
has only taught me one thing since my divorce from Shane.
Men are not what they seem. You know his phone’s constantly blowing up with calls from other women?
Women that make him stop what he’s doing and take the calls outside.
And they all have these ridiculous flower names. It’s just…pathetic.”
“As many men are. For tonight though, you’re with me. No kids. No asshole date slash bosses. Just us, and wine, and winning bingo boards. By the way, you’re one away from a bingo.”
“I am?” I ask, looking down. Sure enough, all I need is milkweed. Charming.
But Joni is right. And as a typically eternal optimist, I am not going to let that man ruin my evening. I top off my glass of wine and wait for the bartender to call out milkweed.
As it would turn out, she did.
I got my first bingo ever, winning a prized cherry tomato plant of all things.
And while I’m not particularly great with plants (most of mine are fake succulents in cute pots from Homegoods), I have hope for me and Tom.
If he can survive my black thumb household, maybe I can survive Mr. Hemingway polluting my shop.
Joni and I say goodbye, and I make my way out of the shop. It isn’t until I am stumbling towards my car, dropping my keys and almost dropping Tom (he’s not a small plant. He already has green tomatoes growing on him), that I realize I maybe shouldn’t be driving.
I lean my back against the car, plant in hand, and look up at the sky. Stars are hard to see in the city, but I can see one. And I take it as a sign.
“Hey, Dad,” I slur. “I know, I know. I drank too much. Maybe I’ll just walk back to the shop and crash there for the night. I can sleep in the kiddy corner since that’s going away soon.”
I smile at the thought but it’s not a happy one.
“I’m sorry, Dad. I’m trying. Just…send a sign. I mean, look at me. I’m drunk. I have a tomato plant depending on me. And I’m about to lose our livelihood to the devil. And to top it off, I don’t think I’m ever going to be a mom.”
The last words hurt.
My dad always told me I would be a great mom.
He knew it was important to me, even from a young age.
And now here I am worried that I’m going to kill the plant too.
Five days in my care and all those promising little tomato buds will be shriveling up.
Tom will be yet another plant carcass that goes out in the Sunday trash.
I giggle out loud at the insanity of my thoughts and take in a deep breath. “Sorry to bother you this late, Dad. Just…send help. Please.”
Just then, my peripheral catches movement in the shape of a man across the street. A man headed right towards me. I straighten up, fumbling with my keys and hold them out like a knife. Meanwhile my other hand has a death grip on Tom.
“Don’t move. I have…a knife.”
“Calm down, it’s just me.”
The voice is familiar, though not comforting.
It’s Dax.
Fuck.