Chapter 35
Libby
“What are you doing here?” Joni asks as she holds the front door to her bungalow house open. I am shaking, both from feeling cold and crying in my car.
“Is everything okay?” I hear her husband ask. He’s at the dining room table with the kids who are all chowing down on pizza. They all greet me with cute, full-mouthed hellos but I can’t even process that right now.
“I don’t know,” Joni whispers to him before ushering me away to her bedroom. She closes the door and shoves the laundry basket of what smells like freshly washed towels to the side so we can sit on the bed. “Come here. Tell me what happened.”
“It’s Dax,” I say through a thick mouth because I haven’t actually stopped crying. Once I made the realization in the car of what was going on, the water works valve busted and has been gushing ever since. “He’s not who I thought he was.”
“What happened? Did you get in a fight? Listen honey, with everything he’s got going on I’m sure he’s a little high key and I can’t blame the man.”
“No. He’s not who I thought he was,” I repeat.
Joni is lost. “Who did you think he was?”
“Jax,” I answer.
“You mean he lied about his name? Of course he did. You were both looking for a one-night stand. Lots of people lie about who they are when they go on the apps for that. What matters is that you’re together now and–”
“No,” I cut her off. “Joni. Dax…was not Jax. Look…”
I pull the photo up again and zoom in. Joni analyzes it then looks back at me. “Are you sure? I mean it’s not the clearest photo.”
“I’m positive,” I say. Then I type Jax Shaeffer into the search engine on a social media page and sure enough, the real Jax pops up.
“Wait…” Joni shakes her head. “So, if that’s the real Jax…”
“He stood me up. Got to the cantina and chickened out.”
“How do you know this?” Joni asks, her head visibly spinning. So, I tell her. I tell her about the guy at the bar. Jax. I tell her what he said and what he showed me. In the process of it all, I am crying again, and I reach into Joni's bin of towels and grab one to wipe my nose with.
“So…let me organize all this info in my brain in a way that I can process without blowing a circuit. The man you were supposed to go out with at the cantina, the one you had been talking to on the app…was Jax.”
“Jaxon Shaeffer. Who apparently runs a chain of restaurants. Which is probably why I keep running into him.”
“And he ghosted after he saw you that day. Before you saw him.”
“I guess I wasn’t one night stand material or something,” I sniff with disgust.
“And when Dax approached you…he said–”
“Sorry, I’m late.”
“So he was already in the bar,” she says, connecting the dots.
“Probably watching. Listening to the story I told the waitress about how I never do this and all that shit.”
Joni deflates a little. “You don’t really think that he was pretending to be another guy.”
“He claimed his name was Jax.”
“Did he? Or did he just say sorry I’m late?” she asks, and I sit up a little straighter.
“Are you defending him? For lying to me?”
“No! Hell no! I’m just saying…this whole thing is wild.
I can’t imagine why he would do that. I mean, I understand him maybe being shy approaching you after losing his wife and feeling off his game.
But to lie about being the man you were supposed to meet?
What would have happened if the real guy showed?
Or tried going out with you again after that? ”
“Dax was only looking for a one and done. I don’t think he cared about the aftermath.”
Joni still looks skeptical. “It just…it seems stupid to be completely honest. Like too much could backfire. I think you should talk to him about it.”
“What is there to talk about?” I ask. “He lied about who he was.”
“But why? Just to get laid? It was a good fuck, you said so yourself, Libby. Multiple times. And then you ended up going out again and again. Fib or not, I think there’s a reason it happened.”
“Oh, there’s a reason, alright,” I agree with her. “So, his sister-in-law can’t take his kids away.”
Joni stops and shakes her head. “Okay you lost me. What does that have to do with–”
“You said it yourself, Joni. If Dax has a girlfriend, the court might sway in his favor. If he’s got a live-in girlfriend who the kids are crazy about, Jenna’s case will lose steam.
” I stand up. “I think he’s been fighting her on this for longer than he wants to admit.
I think he went to the cantina looking for someone he could woo and then use to keep custody of his kids. ”
Joni stands up too. “Libby. I think you need to talk to him. Before you make any assumptions that accusatory.”
But I just shake my head, the tears burning my already hot eyes. “All of it makes sense.”
“Why?” she asks. “Why does the worst-case scenario make sense?”
“Because the worst-case scenario is my life, Joni!” I cry out a little louder than I probably should.
But I am feeling a bit unhinged right now.
“Think about it. I was raised in a little bookshop, and I’ve made it my entire identity.
Not only that, I’ve used it as a shield from the outside world.
Because in the outside world, my mom died.
And then my dad used that little bookshop to shield us even more.
To create a safe-space full of love and stories where we could hide from the reality of it all.
And then he died too. And along comes Shane, a man full of lies disguised as promises.
And I was stupid enough to believe him. I believed him even when he was mean, cruel, cold, and manipulative.
I believed him until I couldn’t anymore.
And then…and this is probably the stupidest part…
I was naive enough to think that the man I met on a dating app was actually genuine.
Well. The joke is on me. Especially since that man is also trying to take my bookshop, my safe-space, away from me. ”
“But is he still?” she asks after my rant. “I thought you two worked it all out–”
“Nothing is what it seems, Joni. And now that I am standing on the outside for once, I can see that.”
I wipe my face one more time before straightening myself up. I need to go home. I need to figure out what I am going to do next. Because everything I thought was real, everything I believed, everything I always wanted, was a lie.
And I have to start over. Again.