Believing in You - Signed Paperback

Chapter One: Ivy

“You did what?” I asked, my hand trembling as I set down the mug of coffee I’d just poured.

“We already set up your profile,” Rachel said. She cast a glance at Nora, then looked back at me. “Don’t hate us.”

I crossed my arms over my chest. “Oh, too late. I completely hate you.”

“Ivy,” Nora smiled like the Cheshire cat. “We knew you wouldn’t do it yourself. So we took care of it.”

“Maybe I wouldn’t do it myself because I didn’t want it done.” I threw my hands up in frustration. I could feel my cheeks getting red as realization dawned on me. “Wait, when did you do this? Is it too late to take it down before anyone sees it?”

Nora and Rachel exchanged a guilty look, and Nora shrugged. “The wine was flowing. I honestly don’t know what time we finished it. Late last night.”

My hands twitched out in their direction. “Let me see it, maybe it’s not too late.”

Rachel crinkled her nose. “I’m sorry, Vee. My phone is still logged into it, and I’ve been getting blown up all morning. Or, I guess, you have.”

My eyes bulged nearly out of their sockets. “What?”

Rachel took her phone out of the pocket of her workout leggings—her uniform as our school’s PE teacher—and opened it to the dating app. “Holy crap, you have seventeen Connection Requests.”

“What does that mean?” I snatched the phone out of her hands and tried to make sense of what I was seeing.

I’d never signed up for a dating app before and had no idea how to navigate the platform. Sure enough, however, I could tell that whatever a Connection Request was, I had seventeen of them. My stomach turned as I realized that these were all living, breathing men, weighing in on the profile that I hadn’t even set up for myself.

Nora looked concerned. “Are you okay?”

I glared up at her. “I’m not sure yet.”

Rachel picked up my World’s Best Teacher coffee mug from the counter behind me and brought it to the table Nora was sitting at. She pulled out a chair and gestured to it. “Sit. Let’s have a look at these Connection Requests. Lunch is almost over.”

I closed my eyes, sighed deeply, then lowered myself into the chair. “Why did you guys think this would be a good idea? When you asked me if I’d ever consider dating again, I had no idea saying ‘yes’ meant … this.”

“Vee, you just seem so sad all the time,” Rachel said, giving me a small, pitying smile. “I know you were with Cory since … well, forever. So that’s understandable. But still, it wouldn’t kill you to get back out there.”

Nora nodded. “Agreed.”

I shot Nora an accusatory look. “You won’t even text that cute guy you met last weekend.”

“I’m waiting for him to text me,” she replied.

“Mm-hmm.” I turned to Rachel. “And you only see your boyfriend at the gym.”

“We’re both really busy,” Rachel defended herself. “And our love lives aren’t the issue here. Yours is. You need a rebound.”

I bit my lip. I’d never liked the idea of a rebound. What, that’s the person you date right after someone you loved, and you’re supposed to use them to get over your ex? How is that fair to the rebound? It’s not.

“The thing is, I feel like Cory led me on. Like, here I was expecting him to propose, and he dumps me instead. I was blindsided. I don’t want to lead someone else on just so I can get over my issues. It doesn’t feel right.”

Rachel reached out and put a hand on my knee. “You don’t have to lead someone on. You can have fun conversations or go on a really great date. You don’t have to promise them this big commitment. Just … I don’t know ….”

“Find a super-hot guy, and have a little fun to get out of your funk,” Nora finished for her.

“Precisely,” Rachel said.

I raised my chin to the ceiling and sighed. “I’m not going to win this, am I?”

They both shook their heads and laughed, causing another sigh to escape me. I handed the phone back to Rachel. “You’ll need to show me how to work this app. I have no idea what I’m doing.”

“On it,” Nora said, rubbing her hands together with a devilish smile.

For the rest of our lunch break, my two best friends schooled me on Connect, America’s current favorite dating app. I learned that a Connection Request was where a user sees a profile they like and basically “favorite” it. Seventeen guys had Favorited me. If I Like them back, a Connection is made and we’re able to start messaging. If I don’t, I hit Ignore and they’ll never know.

Once I knew my way around the app, it was time to check out the guys who had requested me. Bachelor number one was cute, or at least his picture was. My friends weren’t sensitive to my fears of being catfished. According to my friends, it’s a necessary risk with online dating, and if you let that get into your head, you wouldn’t have a very good time. After seeing that he was a pediatrician—and hearing my girlfriends swoon over how cute he was for choosing to work with kids—I made the Connection.

And on we went, nixing the guys who looked like weirdos and making Connections with the cute ones who had stable jobs. By the end of our lunch hour, we’d made our way through all of the pending Connection Requests and even sent out a few of our own. I had to admit, it was actually kind of fun.

That is, until a message came through and I about jumped out of my skin. “What do I do?”

Nora rolled her eyes as she gathered up her bag to head back to class. “We don’t have time to deal with it now, so we’ll check it out when we get home.”

“Besides,” Rachel added, handing me back my phone after installing the app on it instead of keeping my profile logged in on hers, “you don’t want to seem too eager. He can wait a few hours. Where’s the fire?”

I narrowed my eyes at her. “Really?”

“Oops,” she said, making an awkward face as she remembered my ex was a firefighter. “I’ll skip the fire jokes.”

Without another word, I turned on my heel and headed toward my classroom. Online dating. Me. The girl who’d been in love with the same guy since elementary school. The girl who’d thought she’d one day marry that guy and skip out on the awkwardness of dating altogether.

Not for the first time that day, I silently cursed Cory Roberts and his big-city dreams. This was all his fault.

* * *

As was custom on a Friday night after work, the three of us girls stopped at the grocery store on our way home. We grabbed some wine, snacks, and ingredients for Saturday morning brunch.

By the time we pulled up to the cute bungalow we shared in the trendiest neighborhood in Fort Worth, Nora and Rachel had worn themselves out trying to get me excited to answer my Connect messages. They had no way to understand how I felt about it. Both of them had experienced dating since we were teenagers. They weren’t scared to put themselves out there with someone new. Fear of rejection was something they’d gotten used to in the dating world. But in my case, my first taste of rejection had come when my boyfriend of eleven years dumped me and moved away. Forgive me for being nervous about putting my heart out there again.

Once we were settled with our wine and snacks, we hopped back on the app. My stomach turned with anxiety over what I’d find in my inbox. To my utter shock, I had seven messages. Which meant that all seven of the Connections I’d made earlier in the day had resulted in a message from each guy I’d Favorited.

My eyes flew from the screen to my friends. “Ugh. I don’t know if I can do this. There’s seven messages. I have to juggle seven guys at once?”

Nora chuckled. “I mean, you’re not dating all seven of them.”

“Everyone kind of figures that you’re talking to other people on the app,” Rachel explained.

Nora held up a finger. “That is, until you have that whole exclusivity conversation. Which usually means you both delete the app altogether.”

I gulped.

Rachel took a sip of her wine and waved a hand. “Let’s not worry about that yet. Just start with the first message.”

I nodded and tapped the first message in my inbox, waiting for it to load. It was from the pediatrician. I cleared my throat and read the message to my friends.

Mark: Hey, teacher. I have to say, after being in school for so many years to become a doctor, I was hesitant to reach out to you. But if you’re really as beautiful as your picture suggests, you’re worth it.

Rachel made a gagging noise, and Nora scrunched her face in disgust.

“I guess we’re not fans of Mark?” I asked with a chuckle.

Nora shook her head. “We already knew he was a doctor from his profile. Why did he need to be so braggy in his message? Next.”

“Do I ignore it or do I reply and tell him I’m not interested?” I asked, feeling bad for rejecting him even though I was the one who was afraid of being rejected.

“Ignore it.” Both of my friends respond at once.

I move to the next message in the inbox. I tell my friends that it’s from Chris, an accountant, and read them his message.

Chris: Hey, baby.

“That’s it?” Rachel asked.

“Yep,” I replied.

Nora shrugs. “I mean, do you like being called ‘baby’ by someone you don’t know?”

“No?” I responded, but it comes out more like a question.

“I say ignore it,” Rachel said. “I don’t know why he couldn’t come up with something more interesting to say.”

“Maybe because he’s an accountant.” Nora pops a chip in her mouth with a wink.

I moved to the next message, read it aloud, and then laughed as my friends shot another guy down. And on it went, until we landed on the sixth message in my inbox.

Robby: Hey, I’m Robby. I’m a mechanic. I want to let you know right off the bat that I have a six-year-old son. You won’t meet him unless we turn into a serious thing, but if that’s a deal breaker, at least you know up front. Anyway, I think you’re really pretty, and you probably like kids if you’re a kindergarten teacher, so if you want to talk more, let me know.

I couldn’t help it. By the time I’d finished reading Robby’s message to my friends, I was swooning. I looked up to see their reactions. Nora was holding a chip halfway to her parted lips, an expression like she’d seen a cute puppy on her face. Rachel had her lips pressed into a thin line with her hand over her heart.

“Aw,” Rachel said. “Finally! Something we can work with!”

Nora hopped off the couch and came over to where I sat on our crushed velvet vintage armchair. “Let me see him.”

I pulled up Robby’s picture and laughed as Nora wagged her eyebrows. This guy was a winner in her eyes, anyway. He had sandy-blond hair and the perfect amount of stubble on his square jaw. Our heads bent together and brows furrowed in concentration as we browsed his profile. In addition to being a mechanic and a single father, he was also a book lover who had a passion for cooking.

“I’m totally into this one,” Nora said, plucking the phone out of my hand and showing Rachel, who agreed. After handing my phone back to me, she rubbed her hands together. “Now we get to reply.”

It only took about twenty minutes of joking around and another glass of wine before I finally hit Reply on my message to Robby.

Me: Hey, Robby. Nice to meet you. Your son is definitely not a deal breaker, but thanks for letting me know. You’re right, I do love kids. I saw that you love to cook … is it a deal breaker that my idea of cooking is Kraft Mac & Cheese? Hope not! Talk soon.

“Whew,” I said, putting down my empty wine glass. “Online dating is exhausting.”

“You better hope that last message in your inbox is a flop,” Nora said with a grin. “It took way too long to write back to Robby.”

I stuck my tongue out at her and opened the next message. I wasn’t sure if I wanted it to be a flop or if I wanted it to be good, but when I opened it, all I felt was underwhelmed.

“What does it say?” Rachel asked, coming closer to look over my shoulder.

“It just says, ‘Hey,’” I said for Nora’s benefit, who was busy washing out our salsa bowl at the sink.

“Well, that’s anticlimactic,” Nora said, turning off the water and drying her hands. “But, at least it’s an easy reply.”

“It is?” I asked.

Rachel shrugged. “Say hey back. Then, I guess, just wait until he replies again.”

I harrumphed and typed out the quick reply, hit Send, and then put my phone down with a sigh. “I guess one out of seven ain’t bad.”

Rachel put a clip on our bag of tortilla chips and put it back in the cabinet. “I feel like one out of seven is pretty typical. Dating is hard.”

“Agreed,” Nora chimed in. “This was a fun night. I’m excited to see if anything comes of your conversation with Robby.”

I took a seat on a barstool at our kitchen island. It had been kind of fun. Stressful and overwhelming at times, but there was something about the way these interactions felt more like a video game than a real dating scenario that took a lot of the pressure off. If it gets weird, all I have to do is delete the app. No harm, no foul.

“Thanks for doing this for me, guys,” I told them. “I’m not sure if I’m actually going to date anyone I meet on here, but for once the idea of dating doesn’t make me want to jump off a bridge and get it over with, so that’s a win.”

Nora gave me a small smile. “We know it sucks about you and Cory, Vee. Trust us, we get it. We’ve been there since the beginning, since we were all kids. But when Cory said he didn’t know who he was without you, I have to ask—did you kind of get what he meant?”

I looked between her and Rachel, who was suddenly very busy straightening up the kitchen. “What do you mean?”

Rachel faced me with a sheepish expression and crossed her arms across her chest. “You were like, what, eight years old when Cory first told you he loved you?”

Nora nodded. “And then you guys officially became boyfriend and girlfriend in middle school. He was constantly around, being friends with Travis. Do you know who you are without him?”

The mention of my older brother had me squirming in my seat. “I’m not sure.”

“Well,” Rachel said, coming over to place a hand over mine on the counter, “this dating app is a good way to find out. If nothing else, you’ll find out what you don’t want in a man.”

I snorted. “Oh, gee, can’t wait.”

❤️ Online Dating

❤️ Brother’s Best Friend

❤️ Military Hero

❤️ Complicated Relationships

❤️ Small-Town Vibes

San Diego Series:

📚 Forever with You - Vince & Sara

📚 Back to You - Spencer & Ellie

📚 Away from You - Matt & Olivia

📚 Christmas with You - Cooper & Angie

📚 Believing in You - Jake & Ivy

📚 Memories of You - Brooks & Cat

📚 Home with You - Owen & Rachel

📚 Adored by You - Noah & Paige

Related Standalone:

📚 Trusting in You - Eric & Lucy

Note: Chronologically, this one fits in between books 5 & 6 of the Kailua Marines series. These worlds all collide, so if you’d like to read them in chronological order, that’s how it goes! :)

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Just wow!

"I loved this story in the series, everything about it was entertaining. Ivy and Jake were so real, as were the other Marines. I appreciated the family connections: Ivy’s family, her brother and Jake’s family of Marines, and Ivy’s students all played big roles in the story development. The epilogue brought me to tears. It will be hard to top this one."

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Loving this series!

"I love a good sweet romance! Jess Mastorakos is darn good at writing them! This was a fun jaunt with a couple who fall in love while he is deployed. And it happens to be that he's in love with his best friends sister. Sticky situations abound! But always end with a HEA!"

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐ Thank you for your service

"Great love story…..met my husband briefly after coming home from Korea…3 months later he had to leave for his reserve obligation for 2 weeks….seemed like an eternity…I so very much enjoyed how the relationship grew even with their doubts and her brother’s influence..loved it"