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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•✦─Summer, 1953─✦• Jean, age 16
Jean's sophomore year of high school was spent consumed with books, fashion magazines, her sewing machine, and Ed Whitington—but mostly Ed Whitington.
Jean had started the year hardly knowing the boy, seeing him on occasion in the classes they shared. She didn't see him as anything but a schoolgirl crush until they were paired together for an assignment in English.
As it turns out, not only was he handsome, but he was also funny. And charming. And sweet. And Jean really, really liked him, and he seemed to like her, too.
Eventually, they were smiling at each other as they passed in the hallways, and exchanging pleasantries at their lockers, and then Ed was holding her books and walking her to class.
And it all led up to Ed asking Jean to go steady with him.
It was the most wonderful thing sixteen-year-old Jean had heard in all her life.
Of course, Jean said yes, and they spent the school year holding hands when they could and going out on dates, and—best of all—they kissed. A lot.
It was just like the type of kissing Jean had seen Jory and Maude partaking in behind the barn years before, and Jean loved it. Ed made her feel like she was one of the protagonists in her romance novels.
Jean thought about him a lot, picturing him becoming her husband and the father of her kids one day. They'd be high school sweethearts and would have a lovely little story to tell their offspring and those who asked, she'd decided.
But then Debby Falk from school called one night during summer break.
"Jean, it's for you!" Paulie yelled from the kitchen.
Thinking it was Ed, Jean rushed out of her bedroom. Paulie held out the phone to her, then jerked it away when she tried to grab it. He did it several more times she finally snatched it from him.
"Hello?" she said into the receiver once she had it, playfully glaring at Paulie as he went outside.
"Hey, Jean, it's Debby Falk."
Jean frowned. She had talked to Debby plenty of times in school, but never thought they were close enough to talk outside of school.
"Oh, hey, Debby. How's your summer break goin'?"
"It's good," Debby replied, "but that's not why I'm callin'. I'm callin' 'cause I just saw Ed and Meryl Zimmerman kissin' in the cinema parking lot!"
