Romantic - Enemies to Lovers - Forbidden Love
•✦───✧✦✧───✦•
In the peacetime following World War II, Jean Ward loses everything and is sent to live with her best friend, Clyde Mayberry, and his brood of brothers on his family's cattle ranch.
For a...
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•✦─Late Summer, 1955─✦• Jean, age 17
Jean entered her junior year with confidence, the catalyst of her new attitude being the Mayberry boys' words the night she had snuck out with them.
She strode into her junior year with only one goal in mind—that she would show Ed Whitington that she was better off without him.
She did so by walking around with her head held high and her shoulders pulled back confidently. Nothing would shake her, and she was always cool and aloof, she decided.
Alongside her confidence, Mama's beauty had also found Jean that year.
It didn't happen right away, but gradually.
Her face slimmed, the plumpness of childhood no longer hiding her cheekbones, and the rest of her had filled out, the line of her body with more hills than plains. The bumps on her face had disappeared as well, thanks to a new beauty regimen.
And people began to notice. For the first time, boys looked her way as she strutted down the hallways, and girls glared at her.
She was talked about and talked to.
She was popular.
With popularity came all the girls and boys that frequented the realm, the real snotty ones she'd grown up with but had never given her the time of day beforehand.
It was an odd thing talking to the head cheerleader about how pretty Grace Kelly looked at the Oscars, and getting flirted with by the quarterback in geometry felt surreal.
Even though the group made it known that she was welcome with them, Jean stuck to her old ways and stayed with the people who had been friends with her through it all—Clyde, Gloria Messing, and Peggy Humphries.
Gloria and Peggy were practically polar opposites of each other. Gloria was all dark—dark, curly hair, dark eyes, and olive-toned skin with a moody personality—and Peggy was a beam of sunlight—pale hair, blue eyes, and a sunny disposition.
Gloria and Peggy had been with Jean since freshman year and were her closest confidants. Though she still considered Clyde to be her best friend, there were some things that she couldn't tell him. Namely, things about her persistent crush on his brother.
"I'm so excited for Jory to come home," she had told the girls on their last day of school. "I can't wait for him to see me."
"Why? 'Cause you got those cushions on your chest now?" Gloria joked.
"Yeah, maybe," Jean said, cleaning out her locker. "Do you think he'll notice?"
"Of course he'll notice. With your blouse unbuttoned like that, all the boys notice." Gloria rolled her dark eyes.
