Page 100 of Accidental Blind Date

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?”