Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Ever since she left for college, the Avonlea dirt hasn’t felt the same underneath Anne’s boots.

Perhaps it’s because she’d learned so much, or because she’s been living in a city for so long now, or perhaps it’s simply that she’d realized Avonlea no longer held the thrill of opportunity for her that it once did. Whichever it is, it has caused some of the magic to seep out of the soil here. She no longer puts her foot down and feels the pulse of possibility bursting through her body.

Maybe that’s why it had been so easy to say yes. If Avonlea isn’t her true home anymore, Anne simply has no home, and the idea of being unmoored is more frightening than making the wrong decision is. Most of the girls she knows had said yes as soon as they received their first marriage proposal— Anne doesn’t see why she should be any different. And still, as she stands in front of Green Gables for the first time in months, not even her corset can contain the wild pounding of her heart.

She doesn’t know why she’s afraid to tell her family. Anne had spent the entire train ride thinking about it, had even questioned herself as the carriage rolled through the roads of her beloved town, and she still can’t quite place her finger on it. Matthew and Marilla had liked Roy just fine when they had come to visit her last year; Roy had bought dinner and been ever so gentlemanly.

Still. Still. Anne hadn’t been thinking about spending the rest of her life with him back then— not really. She had been thinking about how delightful it was to be loved, how handsome his nose was, how he spoke with the kind of poetry that even she felt envious of. Roy Gardner glides through life as though it were easy, and Anne would give anything to do just that.

The best way to achieve ease, she decides, is to simply pretend to have it. Anne picks up her bag, adjusts her hat, and exhales lengthily before squaring her jaw and heading up the steps to knock on the door of Green Gables.

Marilla swings the door open with a furrow on her brow, which immediately softens as soon as she sees the perpetrator of the offending knock.

“Anne?” she says with a surprised lilt. She clutches her hands to her chest. “Oh, Anne, what a wonderful surprise.”

Anne beams, leaning in to hug Marilla with everything she is worth.

“I have news,” she says, ignoring the nervous flutter of her heart. “Good news.”

Marilla lets her go, holding her at an arm's-length so that she can inspect Anne’s visage. She does this every time Anne comes home, as though she’s expecting her daughter to have wasted away in the minimal slices of time that they don’t see each other.

“Why didn’t you send a telegram?”

“I wanted to tell you straight away and at that point it just seemed silly,” explains Anne, taking her hat off and setting it on the kitchen table. “Where’s Matthew?”

“The barn,” Marilla replies. “But don’t you dare go out there and see him. You’ll ruin your petticoat.”

“I’ll wait to see him then,” she agrees, smiling to herself.

It’s strange that things are so different and so much the same. Anne covers her dress with one of her old pinafores, which still hangs on the hooks where Marilla keeps their aprons. As she ties it behind her back and gets to work setting the table, Marilla takes her cue, going back to the stove to poke at the stew she’s heating up there.

“This news of yours,” Marilla says suspiciously. “What exactly is its nature?”

“You’ll just have to wait and find out,” Anne teases, feeling more mature than she ever has as she says it. It’s nice to have a secret. Womanly. A thrill shifts through Anne’s chest as she watches the words dangle over Marilla.

“Fine then,” replies Marilla, only a tad exasperated. “You may as well ring the bell for Matthew, dinner’s just about ready anyway.”

Anne bolts over to the bell, more excitement than she has felt in ages picking up in her gut as she pictures the look on Matthew’s face when he sees her. He doesn’t disappoint. His whole mouth goes loose with joy, a wide grin splitting his lips as his eyes light up from inside out. Anne can’t help the squeal she lets out as she rushes off of the front porch and into his waiting arms, peace washing over her when he squeezes her tight.

“What are you doing here?” he asks. “Aren’t you supposed to be shaping young minds?”

“The minds have been shaped for the year,” Anne tells him, looping her arm around his as they amble back towards the house. “I’ve come home for a summer visit.”

“For how long?”

“I’m not sure yet,” admits Anne. “There are… variables.”

“What type of variables?”

“You’ll see,” she says, kissing him on the cheek when he holds the door open for her, pleasantly puzzled by how cryptic she’s being.

They talk through dinner just like they do on all their best nights: nonstop and with the kind, familial teasing that comes with loving each other. Anne feels warm when Marilla admonishes her and Matthew for eating too quickly and feels warmer still when Matthew sends a wink her way as he continues to eat at whichever pace he so desires.

She’s dilly dallying, she knows she is, so when their plates are finally clean and Anne is about to jump up to begin collecting the dishes, she isn’t surprised when Marilla reminds her of the purpose of her visit.

“Anne, you said you had news,” she says coaxingly, as though Anne is a thirteen year old crying in the woods and not a twenty-two year old home to visit her parents. “I think now would be an excellent time to tell us what it is.”

“Oh,” Anne says, sitting back down abruptly. “Right.”

She looks between the two of them, at the faces of the two people who have spent a decade loving her, supporting her, taking care of her. It’s not true, the sense of instability she’s been feeling lately. Maybe she doesn’t have a true physical home anymore, but she has these two people and their smiling faces. She has the ghost of the younger version of herself who used to run up and down these stairs. She has recollections of school days and parties and romps through the Avonlea fields.

She has everything they gave her and all the love they still give her, and even on the worst of nights, Anne is able to remember to be grateful to Matthew and Marilla Cuthbert.

“It’s alright,” Matthew says now, kindness set deep into his eyes when he looks at her. “Whatever it is, it’s alright.”

Finally, she allows herself to nod. Under the table, Anne fists her hands in her skirts so that she doesn’t dig her nails into her palm. Once she tells them, this is so terrifyingly real. She will truly, irrevocably be someone’s fiancée.

“I’m engaged to be married,” she says to them. And then, if they didn’t already know, adds, “To Roy Gardner.”

There’s nothing quite as stifling as Marilla making an effort to act neutral. For the next few days, Anne spends morning, noon, and night fielding questions that she barely knows the answers to, such as whether she will quit her job, where she and Roy will live, would the wedding be here in Avonlea or would they be having it in Charlottetown where they had met? In truth, Anne hadn’t even wanted Roy to tell anyone until she told Matthew and Marilla and hadn't thought much past their reactions. After she’d told them, she had hiked her way to Diana’s new home and had used the telephone to call Roy, letting him know that he was free to tell who he wished about their impending nuptials. Other than him letting her know that he would make his way to Avonlea soon to visit with her family, their conversation had been brief and lacking in detail. Anne had been far too busy celebrating her best friend’s swelling stomach to pay much attention to anything else.

With Diana pregnant and keeping a house in order, no classes to lesson plan for, and no school to attend, there isn’t much for Anne to do in Avonlea. She thinks about paying her old friends the obligatory visits that come with being home but can’t imagine herself telling them that she’s engaged to a boy that none of them liked too much at school. The truth is, Roy had always come off poorly to her friends. What appeared debonair to her was regarded as snobby by everyone but Diana, who was accustomed to such airs in a way that their other friends weren’t.

By the middle of a heat-filled afternoon, after telling Marilla that no, she did not know whether she wanted a white or egg cream nightdress for her trousseau, Anne finally gives up feigning patience and announces that she’ll be taking a walk. She doesn’t even take the time to change before she bursts out the screen door and into the welcome embrace of the summer air. She runs past the chicken coop, past the wooden gate, until she finally reaches the edge of the forest. There, she hunches over, hands on her knees, and breathes in and out.

It’s not Marilla’s questions that are stifling. It’s that she doesn’t feel particularly eager to answer them.

She had always expected that, if she were to fall in love, she would glow with it. Anne knows herself; she knows that her capacity to love eclipses almost everything else about her. Even though she’d never been courted before Roy, she had always imagined that it was the type of thing that would consume her waking hours, encircling her heart until she was spinning around in the sheer energy of her joy. With him, however, she feels a simple, satisfying contentment. He is a great deal too good for her, and he is enough.

One night, at the beginning of her courtship with Roy, she had said that to Diana. It was whispered between the two of them as though it was Anne’s dirtiest secret, but Diana had simply placed her hand over Anne’s and looked up at the constellations with her, thinking before speaking.

“I don’t think it can be like the books,” she had said, “or like that first childhood love when you feel as though your heart is about to explode. I think this is what it is to love someone when you’re older and seeking companionship. It isn’t everything you are, it isn’t consuming. It just… is.”

Diana hadn’t sounded upset about it so Anne had been determined not to be either. She waited until she got back to Green Gables to let her tears wet her pillow. She cried in mourning for the love stories she’d read, the relationships she’d admired, and that feeling. The feeling of a sunlit classroom, heart pounding against her throat, a hand in hers that made her believe that every single nerve ending was within the tips of her fingers where they touched his.

If she had known, back when she was sixteen, that she was never going to have that again after the first time, perhaps she would have savored it for longer, rather than hurrying to bury her broken heart amidst piles of papers and stacks of textbooks.

The heart she carries with her now is finely mended and stronger for it.

She breathes out one last time before straightening her posture and continuing on into the woods, simply glad to exist among the wildlife that is so dear to her. The trees are as green as they ever get, the ground plump with grass and dirt and flowers that everyone considers to be weeds. Anne has always loved them, admiring how they can simultaneously be both beautiful and resilient. In many ways, she finds weeds aspirational.

Between the walks she took with Diana and the story club meetings she had here, the blossoms in this forest had become so dear to her. Somewhere along the way, they had become hers. Walking with them now shakes something loose inside of her, as though a few of the bricks on the city sidewalks had been buried in her gut and now they’ve fallen to the ground. Anne turns in a slow circle, letting her eyes dance from tree to tree until she no longer feels like herself. Suddenly, she is a young girl with two braids who cares more for Avonlea than she has ever cared for any place.

It’s not hard to reach inside of herself and locate that girl. It hadn’t been so long ago that Anne was her.

As she walks through the forest, she barely feels the summer heat despite the heavy material of her dress. Everything is protected by the shade of the trees and the unexpected lightness in her heart. If only she could become a dryad and stay here forever, living with the true kindred spirits of the flowers that line these paths. The idea is as enchanting as her mental image of a little cottage tucked into a secret hideaway covered by moss. She imagines herself floating through the woods with a basket on her arm, collecting berries and mushrooms and herbs for her windowsill.

Anne is so caught up in her fantasy that she doesn’t notice the crunch of footsteps coming towards her at first. She stops walking as they get closer, carefully pulling her mind back to the present, ready to make small talk with whichever citizen of Avonlea has come out to enjoy the woods. It’s likely that she will know whoever is heading towards her— there aren’t many surprises in Avonlea, after all. Her very presence ten years ago had been the most shocking surprise anyone in their small town had had in ages.

When Gilbert Blythe finally winds around the corner and sees her, Anne almost smiles at the fact that she is absolutely right about at least one thing: there are no surprises in Avonlea. Then she remembers the fact that she hasn’t seen him since the day they got their Queens exam results and the smile slides off of her face abruptly, replaced by what she can only assume is an embarrassed grimace.

Determined, Anne rearranges her features and switches tracks to approach her old schoolmate head on.

“Anne,” he says happily, “what brings you to Avonlea?”

“My family lives here,” she replies, then realizes that it comes off like she’s snapping and inwardly chastises herself. “And you know how much I love a walk in the forest.”

She cringes inwardly at the implication of familiarity, but Gilbert remains unbothered.

“That you do,” he says, voice easy, as though there isn’t anything in the world as simple as seeing her. Maybe that means he’d forgotten her letter? Oh, but who forgets a letter in which someone says they love you, even if the letter was delivered six years ago. “I guess Charlottetown doesn’t boast much of nature, does it?”

“No, it certainly does not,” Anne agrees, laughing despite how uncomfortable she is. “I don’t think I enjoy living in a city as much as I thought I would.”

“I found the same thing with Toronto,” says Gilbert.

He looks down at her expectantly, waiting for her to lobby a response, but Anne flounders, too off-kilter from his sudden appearance.

“Did you like medical school all the same?” she asks, almost sweating with relief when she thinks of something to say.

“I did,” he admits. “If you permit me to walk with you, I could tell you about it.”

For a moment, her stomach rolls at the idea of walking beside the boy who she had given her heart to so long ago, only to have it thrown back. She doesn’t want to walk alongside him and pretend that it never happened.

But Anne is nothing if not an actress, so she smiles and nods, turning around so that they are moving towards Green Gables.

“I must admit, I was surprised when I heard you weren’t going to Paris.”

“Mmm,” he says, putting his hands behind his back. “Well, I expect there was more than one surprising piece about that particular bit of correspondence.”

Anne frowns, thinking back, trying to remember the letter in which Marilla had told her that Gilbert had ended up going to the University of Toronto. She can’t recall anything unusual in it, just the way she had wept to Diana that night. There was something achingly painful about the fact that it wasn’t that he wanted a life with Winifred more than he wanted a life with her— he had chosen not to want her despite the fact that he was now a free man.

It’s not something she wants to think about, even though the wound has healed, so she changes the subject abruptly.

“And now you’ve graduated?” she says. “And come back to Avonlea?”

“My family is here,” Gilbert says with ease. He walks slowly, still in no hurry. She wonders if he’d picked up that habit because of exasperation at the hustle and bustle of living in a city for so long. “Plus, I promised Delly I would come back after medical school. She was starting to lose patience.”

Anne laughs out loud at that, unable to help herself. He has a way of putting her completely at ease even when she wants to stick her foot in her mouth, the strangest dichotomy of her entire life, and there are leftover feelings of warm familiarity somewhere within her heart. His twenty-four year old self seems to have darker circles under the eyes and a smaller smile, but ultimately he is still the same Gilbert, the same boy she had once loved deeply.

How strange it is to meet him like this, when she is betrothed to someone else.

“Are you working the land with Bash?” she inquires pleasantly, mirroring him as she tucks her arms behind her back.

“And taking house calls. Just until a nearby post opens up,” explains Gilbert. “The farm can support all of us until I find a more permanent place to settle, thanks to Mr. Barry’s partnership with our apple export.”

“It’s the least he can do for someone pursuing such a noble profession.”

“Speaking of noble professions,” Gilbert says, glancing down at her, fondness seeping into his tone. “How’s teaching going?”

Unable to help herself, Anne begins gushing about last year’s set of students. Gilbert walks next to her, listening intently. It’s been a long time since someone simply stood there and let her ramble nonstop about her children. She supposes Roy has heard it enough, and Matthew and Marilla humor her more than anything else, but Gilbert quietly trods alongside her and nods in all the right places as though her words are the most fascinating thing he’s ever heard.

She wonders, as they walk, if he’s gotten taller since she last saw him.

“And I have a cozy little apartment just minutes away from the schoolhouse. It really is quite convenient.”

“Well,” Gilbert says, finally pulling up short to look at her. “It sounds like you got everything you ever wanted, Anne.”

Something uncomfortable settles into place in her brain as she mulls his words over in her head. Dear Gilbert, I’m sorry I was confused. I’m not anymore. I love you. No. Certainly not everything.

“I’m engaged!” she spits out as quickly as she can. Gilbert blinks at her. “That’s why I’m back in Avonlea at the moment. I’m going to be re-introducing Roy to Matthew and Marilla as my intended.”

“Ah.” Gilbert nods in understanding. They can just see Green Gables through the trees. He begins walking again, his pace still leisurely. “He’s here with you? Your intended?”

It feels uncomfortable to hear him say those words, and even more so in such a polite voice. Anne’s heart tumbles a bit at the lack of reaction from someone that she had once admired so much.

“Not yet. He will be.” She pauses, trying to think of something to say to fill the minutes until they reach Green Gables. “And you? Do you have a wife and some little ones running around with Delly back home?”

Gilbert looks amused at that, a frown accompanying his smile as he looks at her.

“No,” he says as though it’s obvious. “Of course not.”

“What do you mean ‘of course not?’” Anne laughs. “It’s a perfectly reasonable question.”

“Anne,” he says, “I meant what I said in that letter. I’m never going to marry anyone unless that someone is you.”

It’s as though someone has dumped icy cold water on her. She replays the words on a loop. A million questions surge up in her chest, not quite loud enough to cancel out the buzzing in her brain, and she can’t— she can’t think. Can’t move. She’s frozen, staring at him in shock, the boldness of his words too much for her to comprehend.

“I—” she begins, never one for silence, then immediately shuts her mouth, having no idea how she’d been intending on continuing that sentence.

Gilbert seems unbothered by her reaction. He tips his hat at her, smiling slightly.

“Good day,” he says.

And then he turns around and shuffles back into the forest as though he hadn’t just made her world spin on its axis.

To Matthew’s credit, he only banishes Anne from the barn after she nearly kicks over a second milk pail. She feels small and childlike as she trudges back to the house, barely able to meet Marilla’s concerned eyes.

In an effort to find comfort, she stomps up to her bedroom and settles into the chair by the window, fully intent on holding a conversation with her Snow Queen. Yet all she can think about is the sheer brazenness of Gilbert saying such a thing to her. It may have been six years, but it isn’t like him to simply walk away like that after dropping such a revelation.

Even so, he had clearly thought she already knew.

She tries to think back to the letters she had received at college, whether he had ever sent her one, and can’t recall a single missive from her childhood friend. Gilbert had faded into the past just as her feelings for him had, relieving her of any emotional obligation to be true to someone who didn’t love her back. It had allowed her to move on and, for that reason, she was glad that her letter to him had not only been the end of her hope for a relationship with him, but also of their friendship.

It’s a good thing he had decided not to respond in person and had instead written her a—

Oh.

Oh.

Before Anne even realizes what she’s doing, she stands up in her chair, knocking it clean to the ground. At first she wonders if her shortness of breath is because of her corset, but as her heart picks up speed, she recognizes the pounding to be a type of curious elation that she almost doesn’t remember anymore. The sheer force of it causes her to rush down the stairs of Green Gables and past Marilla’s sewing room. She shouts a quick goodbye before she slams the screen door shut and begins running to the barn.

“Matthew,” she pants, “I need to borrow Butterscotch.”

Matthew looks up from the milker he is tending to, confused.

“Is anything the matter, Anne?”

“Yes! No. I don’t know. May I—?”

He moves without needing another word, reminding her so achingly of the last time he’d helped her saddle a horse to go see Gilbert. She loves Matthew so dearly, with his kind, gentle heart and his willingness to take her seriously even when she was a child. She hates living so far away from someone who adores her unconditionally.

It’s rare a person finds somebody who loves them unconditionally. Anne knows that better than anyone.

There’s a light sheen of sweat on her forehead by the time she sees the Blythe-Lacroix house in the distance. Anne urges Butterscotch forward, trying to get to the house before fear overtakes her curiosity. Only as she dismounts and ties the horse to a tree does she realize that she hadn’t considered what she was planning on saying to him. It takes all of her strength not to turn around and hide behind Butterscotch. Instead, she knocks on the kitchen door, holding her hands in fists in the folds of her skirt as she waits for the door to open.

When it does, she nearly loses her nerve again at the pleasantly surprised expression on Gilbert’s face.

How is he not panicked by what he’d said? She is so panicked by what he’d said. She has spent days barely able to breathe for what he’d said.

“Hello.” He’s not confused at her sudden appearance, never rattled by anything, which frankly makes her want to crack another slate over his head.

“Gilbert,” Anne says breathlessly. “I… I never read your letter.”

It’s certainly the equivalent of cracking a slate over his head, come to think of it. His entire expression changes as he looks down at her, blinking in confusion. She watches as all of it occurs to him, little by little, flashing across his face in a sequence of understandings. If the situation were less overwhelming, Anne would probably feel a small sense of vindication at finally knocking him off balance. Instead, she stares at him, still winded and waiting for his reaction.

Gilbert clears his throat.

“Well then,” he says, then steps out the door and closes it firmly behind himself. “I think we’d better go for a walk.”

At this stage in the year, most of the apples in the Blythe orchard are young and small. Anne hasn’t ever stood in this orchard in a full length skirt and she finds herself smiling at the way some of the miniature fallen apples brush against her petticoat. It’s as if they’re greeting her, welcoming her home to Avonlea and giving her something to focus on that isn’t the man who walks beside her.

Gilbert waits a long time to speak, most likely wanting to ensure that they are far enough away from the house to not be overheard. Here, in his family’s private orchard, Anne tries not to think about the fact that no one could happen upon them randomly. If they get into an argument or if they run out of things to say, no unsuspecting neighbor or friend will stumble into them and save them from each other.

Then again. Just to think such things assumes that there is anything to be saved. The truth is, she and Gilbert haven’t been anything to each other in a long time, which is partly what terrifies Anne so much. To hear him say that he wouldn’t… that he wasn’t going to… that he can’t… well. It doesn’t make sense, considering the fact that they haven’t said a single sentence to each other in six years.

“I apologize if my words the other day were unsettling,” begins Gilbert. He’s looking at the trees, not at her. Anne misses the earnestness of his eyes when he was eighteen and had seemed, somehow, so sure of everything. Now that she’s older, she realizes that it wasn’t his certainty of the world, but her heart’s certainty of him, that made him appear that way. “I didn’t think they’d come as any sort of surprise.”

“Not a surprise,” Anne repeats, almost laughing at the insanity of such an idea. “You said—”

“I know,” he says hurriedly, cutting her off. “I know what I said, but as I wrote to you back then, I don’t expect your favor. I didn’t then, and I still don’t.”

She pulls up short, grabbing his wrist to keep him from moving forward without her.

“What do you mean you didn’t expect my favor?” Anne demands. “I couldn’t have been clearer with you!”

His eyes drift to the side, avoiding her face.

“Clear enough, I suppose.”

She won’t allow it, won’t allow for him to avoid her like this all over again. He’s the one who had rejected her in the letter, or so she had thought, and she has been carrying that letter inside of her every day since, remembering how she had been so certain that she would truly be loved by him. She has spent six years burying the disappointment that had risen up in her simply at the sight of her name written in his script with her own pen.

“I told you I loved you.”

Anne’s tone is aggressive and loud, the words repeating back to her through the trees. She hears the echo of her own voice, so full of vitriol, and wonders why it sounds so angry. How could she still be furious about this? How could this still feel like a wound?

But it does, and she is, and therefore she stands in front of Gilbert Blythe in his apple orchard and lets herself bleed just a little for the life that could have been.

“You did no such thing!”

It’s the first time since she’d come home that his voice has scaled out of ‘calm’ and into ‘annoyance.’ Anne feels vindicated. She places her hands on her hips and says, insistently,

“I did. In my letter.”

A shadow crosses his face, darkening his features as he stares down at her, his eyes beating hard against her face.

“Anne… what letter?”

Her instinct is to assume that he’d simply forgotten because she hadn’t been significant enough to save the memory, but she forces it down, trying to collect dignity and logic and put them together. She squares her shoulders, raising her chin to meet his gaze with as much pride as she can.

“I wrote you a letter,” she tells him evenly. “Before our exam results arrived. You were out for the day and I wrote you a letter, Gilbert, and I told you that I was in love with you and I asked you to give me my pen back.”

He looks pale against the green of the trees, like he’s going to be sick. For a moment, he closes his eyes, trailing his fingers down his jaw until they meet in the middle at that chin. That splendid chin. It’s only become more beautiful as they’ve gotten older. He’s become more beautiful.

Even though she suspects what he’s about to say, it still hurts when he says it.

“I never received a letter from you. I… I honestly didn’t know.”

It’s miserable. She feels, suddenly, so miserable.

“Oh,” she says dumbly, incapable of coming up with something better to offer him.

“If I knew… if I’d known… I wouldn’t have just written you a letter, I would have said it all to your face. You weren’t home when I came either and I didn’t want to cause you anymore embarrassment or pain, I just remember thinking that I had to get it out or else I… well, I told Winnie I couldn’t marry her because I was in love with someone else. And I knew that would never change.”

He’s been moving closer to her as he speaks, his eyes searching her face, catching every corner and crevice of her expression. Anne’s heart aches for the young girl who had mourned a boy she knew would never love her. She aches for the young boy who had been brave enough to walk away from a sure thing in order to take a chance. It’s humiliating when she feels tears well in her eyes, but the stricken look on Gilbert’s face makes her feel less alone.

“You never went back on your word? All this time?” she asks, voice small. He nods, clenching his jaw. She reaches out to touch the place where it twitches, then holds herself back. “You could have anyone, Gilbert.”

“I promised Mary I would only marry for love,” he says, grimacing. “And I’ve never been in love with someone the way I was in love with you.”

She lowers her eyes to the ground as guilt and shock war for her attention.

“I’m sorry.”

“Don’t be. I’m… relieved. That I wasn’t feeling something that didn’t exist for you at one point.”

When she looks at him, his mouth is soft and his facial expression is kind. She can physically feel the strength it must have taken for him to choose loneliness. It churns somewhere in her gut, feeling oddly similar to grief. She doesn’t want to grieve him anymore. She doesn’t want him to be gone tomorrow, as he has been for the last six years.

“Be my friend,” she burst out. It startles Gilbert. He laughs.

“What?”

She rushes to explain, words tumbling clumsily over each other as she speaks.

“We grew up together, we were practically family at one point. I know things didn’t work out the way either of us had intended, but we aren’t children anymore and I— well. We. We don’t have to linger in that any longer. Let’s be friends again.”

“Anne,” he says, careful now. “I’m not sure that’s the smartest idea you’ve ever had.”

“Please,” she says, and she knows she’s begging, she knows that’s how it’s coming off, but she can’t miss Gilbert all over again. It would be too much. “I don’t want to lose you two times. I didn’t even want to lose you the first.”

He stands there. Studies her. Shifts uneasily from foot to foot, and Anne thinks that maybe he is trying to figure out how to get out of it, how to escape being in her life.

Then he nods, his eyebrows constricting at the top as he hesitantly agrees, sticking his hand out to her.

“Alright,” he says quietly. “Friends.”

They agree to meet at the juncture where the corner of the Haunted Forest where his orchard meets the path. Anne spends the entire walk there wondering whether friendship should be quite so scheduled. It’s been so long since they were able to speak to each other casually. Anne wonders if friendship with Gilbert is like a muscle that she will have to get used to using again after it had been so dramatically broken. What could they possibly have to talk about?

Logically, Anne knows that there will always be more stories to hear of Gilbert’s time aboard the S.S. Primrose and that he’s lived an entire academic lifetime since the last time she saw him. But as she brushes through the thickets and across dirt-laden pathways, she feels like a small girl with two braids who simply wants to keep avoiding the boy who is always looking at her when she turns around.

Her steps halt as she considers it. Gilbert’s face as he looked at her when they danced together. Gilbert’s intense focus when Anne was discussing the take notice board with him. Gilbert’s eyes on her at Prissy’s wedding. Gilbert’s eyelashes fluttering downwards as he tells her that he shouldn’t have forgotten to use an “e” when he was spelling… engagement.

Perhaps this is indeed a horrible idea. If she still remembers these things, the things that she used to clutch tightly against her chest to comfort her as she was falling asleep, how is she supposed to not be awkward around him? She has a fiancé and a future and plans that are fine, just fine. She’s going to be happy with or without Gilbert.

But because she still remembers those things, Anne doesn’t think she can walk away.

Gilbert is standing against the wooden fence in front of his orchard, munching on an apple with one hand and holding his book open with the other. He seems thoroughly engrossed in whatever he’s reading, to the extent that Anne feels reluctant to bother him. Luckily, he looks up as soon as he hears her approaching, throwing the apple back into his orchard before approaching her.

“Shall we?” he says. His voice is so open and warm that, all of a sudden, Anne can’t quite remember what she was nervous about.

“We shall,” she replies decisively, and the two of them fall into step besides each other, just like they used to when they were walking home from school with Anne’s books in Gilbert’s arms. Back then, they’d had the excuse of going to visit with Mary, or Mary and Delly once the baby was born. Today, they walk together simply for each other, a fact that might have thrilled Anne six years ago.

“Have you read this book?” asks Gilbert before Anne can scramble for something to say. She reaches out for the book eagerly, having already been hoping to get her hands on it.

“‘Songs of the Great Dominion: Voices from the Forests and Waters, the Settlements and Cities of Canada,’” she reads out loud. “Is that the title or the entire book?”

“You’re one to talk,” Gilbert teases. Anne purses her lips at him to disguise how pleased she is at the familiarity. “It’s an anthology, but there’s this one poet in here— E. Pauline Johnson. I thought you might like her writing.”

Instantly, she brightens.

“Yes! She publishes in the periodicals I read. Her perspective provides such scope for the imagination!” Anne is enthusiastic as she rifles through the pages, trying to walk and to find the poem at the same time. Gilbert is kind enough to steer her away from a tree that she nearly crashes into in her eagerness.

“I look forward to discussing it with you when you’ve read it,” he says, tapping the cover fondly with his index finger. “You can take my copy and give it back to me the next time we go for a walk.”

The simple assumption settles into Anne’s chest as light as a feather. He takes next time for granted. He wants there to be a next time. Maybe, just maybe, both of them care enough to work through any discomfort that may come with relearning each other.

It hits her, quite strikingly, that this matters. She hadn’t realized how much it mattered until just now, Gilbert’s book in her hand, his feet crunching against the ground next to her.

“One moment,” Anne says, pulling up short. When she turns to face him, Gilbert automatically mirrors her, brows raised as he watches her eyes skate across his face. “I keep picturing you as your younger self, and I’m trying to become accustomed to this variation of you.”

The explanation seems to be good enough for Gilbert.

“Ah, I see,” he replies. He straightens all the way up, so much taller than her now, and purposefully juts out his chin to give himself a stronger profile. She laughs at his posturing, placing her hands on her hips and squinting dramatically as she traces over him carefully with her eyes.

Gilbert looks like he hasn’t slept in a long time, yet the dark bags under his eyes are belied by the simmer of happiness in his gaze. His hair is much the same as it’s always been, perhaps a little lengthier in the front, but it’s no less tousled than it was each time he would dash into the schoolroom to escape from a blustery snowstorm. He’s still clean shaven, but she knows that if she were to look closer she would see telltale signs of the razor he’d taken to his cheeks just that morning. And everything about him seems to be slightly larger, from his hands to the breadth of his shoulders to the nose down which he peers at her. When he smiles at her, there’s crinkles on his face that hadn’t been there previously, causing a swoop of nostalgia to burn through Anne.

“There,” she says decisively, nodding to punctuate it. She resumes walking, ignoring the way Gilbert laughs out his nose, following behind her quickly, as though she’d tugged on a string that’s wrapped around his waist.

“Did you find what you were looking for?” he inquires, hands folded together innocently behind his back.

“I wasn’t looking for anything in particular,” replies Anne, no-nonsense, but it’s not true and she knows it.

It’s still there. That ever-present tinge of sadness to him that he had never been able to shake after his father died. Anne doesn’t know why she had expected it to vanish, but it certainly hadn’t. It makes her ache for all the love that he deserves but has clearly never received. Despite how close he is with his family, it has been a long time since someone put Gilbert Blythe first.

“When’s it my turn?” he asks. “Don’t I get to make an inspection?”

“You most certainly do not.” Her voice is aghast, as though it’s a shocking proposition rather than the same one she had just made of him. “I’d prefer it if you pretended I was still fresh as a daisy, thank you very much.”

“Oh, you are,” says Gilbert agreeably. “I just wanted to see if your hair had in fact darkened with the passage of time… Carrots.”

She turns her head slowly to the side to glare at him, notices the way he’s smirking like a fiend, and is about to open her mouth to chastise him when Gilbert grabs onto his hat and breaks out into a run. Gasping in mock-fury, Anne races after him across her forest until they collapse in a fit of laughter on the side of a hill.

Later on, when he holds a hand out to her in a t-r-u-c-e to help her up, she pours several blades of grass over his head in vengeance and thinks that she much prefers chasing him when they land in the same place.

On the fifth walk in as many days, Anne invites Gilbert for dinner. It slips out as the two of them trundle up Lover’s Lane. One moment she’s laughing with him about a ridiculous argument Rachel and Marilla had gotten into, the next she’s blurting out that he should come have supper with her and the rest of her family.

“You’re sure Marilla won’t mind?” asks Gilbert after he adjusts to the abrupt change of subject.

“Of course she won’t,” Anne says, waving her hand. “She likes you better than she likes me.”

“Somehow I doubt that.” Gilbert’s voice is sly, like he knows something Anne doesn’t know, and she stops walking to look at him.

“What?”

“What what?”

“The look on your face. You want to say something.”

He purposefully rearranges his features into innocence, holding up his hands.

“I have no thoughts about anything,” he says in that breezy, higher-pitched voice, the same one he uses when he’s teasing Bash.

“Gilbert.”

He laughs, digging his hands into his pockets as he begins moving up the lane once more.

“You’re not around when you’re not around,” he says with ease. “Marilla can’t go ten minutes without talking about you. She’s incapable.”

She thinks about it for the rest of the walk to Green Gables. Gilbert, standing at the General Store with his arms full of flour that Marilla had been intending on carrying herself. Gilbert, walking her home with that pleasant smile across his handsome face as Marilla blabbers on about what Anne’s been doing up in Charlottetown, how she likes teaching, what her little apartment looks like in the middle of the afternoon. There is such familiarity to it even though Anne has never seen it. She tips her chin to the sky and closes her eyes, just for a moment, letting herself feel all of its warmth.

By the time they arrive at Green Gables, Anne wouldn’t let Gilbert go home even if he asked.

“Wait here,” she says, before hurling herself through the door and announcing, with complete confidence, “Gilbert is staying for dinner.”

Matthew looks up from where he is rubbing mud off of his boots. He glances over at Marilla, who stares back at him with befuddlement.

“When did you run into Gilbert?” she asks, the first one to break the silence.

“I was on a walk with him just now,” Anne replies, deciding for honesty. “We’ve gone on walks the past several days.”

Marilla wipes her hands on her apron as she considers this.

“I believe you told me that you were going on a walk with Diana.”

Outside the door, Gilbert coughs. Anne sighs, opening the screen door and beckoning him inside.

“Because I didn’t want you to make the face you’re making right now,” she says flatly, which makes Matthew harrumph a small laugh towards his boots. Gilbert grins boyishly at Marilla, as if telling her that it’s alright, and she studies his expression before giving him a small nod.

“Fine then,” she says, turning back to the stove. “Make yourselves useful and set the table.”

It isn’t until the four of them are clustered around the dinner table, beaming and talking over each other and laughing as they discuss neighbors and friends and their shared history, that Anne realizes it.

For the first time in a long time, Avonlea truly feels like home.

“So there I am, week before exams, knowing that I can’t skip class but sick as I’ve ever been in my life. And the irony of living in an apartment with other students, even if they are studying medicine, is that none of them want to touch you with a ten foot pole in case they catch what you have.”

“Smart, your roommates,” Anne says, shrugging when Gilbert throws her a look of disbelief. “What? I wouldn’t want to risk not being able to take exams either.”

“A little sympathy would be nice.”

They’re standing in his barn while he checks up on one of the pregnant mares, gently soothing a hand over her flank to keep her calm while he inspects the position of the foal.

“Fine. I’m sorry to whichever past version of yourself is offended by my sensical nature.”

“‘Sensical nature?’” repeats Gilbert, shaking his head at her. “When has anyone ever used that phrase to describe you?”

“I believe the first time was about… thirty seconds ago.”

He lets out a quiet guffaw, not wanting to startle the mare, who lifts her head up abruptly anyway. Anne adjusts her position where she sits atop the stall door, settling in more comfortably so that she can touch the nose of the sweet mare. The mare bucks her nose against her hand carefully as Anne offers it, then lowers her head slightly so that Anne can scratch along her snout.

“I see,” he says, but makes it a point to roll his eyes at her. “I’m not sure that counts.”

“Agree to disagree,” responds Anne shortly. “So did you skip your class?”

“Ah, no.” Gilbert, crouched on the floor of the barn, is now checking the foal’s placement inside of the mare’s stomach. It reminds Anne of Matthew, of how gentle he is with the animals, how much he belongs with them. “I went to class with a giant bottle of cold medicine because it was the only thing keeping me awake. I will never forget the look on the instructor’s face when he called on me and I took this huge swig of cough syrup before answering. He thought I was a drunk for sure and certain.”

Anne can’t help her laughter at the image, so loud that she nearly startles Gilbert. He beams up at her from his spot on the floor, watching as she reacts to the story.

“That has to be your most embarrassing med school story, I assume?”

“No, that would be the time I was taking a make up exam in a lecture hall and none of the students in the actual class were answering a question the professor asked. It was so awkward that I just raised my hand and answered myself because the professor momentarily forgot that I wasn’t in the class.”

“Oh, tell me he kicked you out after that.”

“He absolutely did.”

Finally, Gilbert rises, giving the horse one more pat before he closes the stall door behind himself. Anne hops down from her perch, pleased with herself when she manages to do so without tearing the skirt of her third best dress.

“Are you still afraid?” she asks. It’s something that she’s been thinking about ever since she came home.

“Of… not being a good doctor?” he replies, picking up on the gravity of the question with one glance at the way her hands twist together in front of her. “No, it’s… there’s something there, but it’s different now.”

“How is it different?”

She walks with him to the water pump and watches him rinse off his hands, his vest flapping open as he bends over.

“I’m not afraid of telling people bad news anymore,” he admits. “You were right, all those years ago. It’s something doctors have to get used to, and I believe that I’ll eventually become… adept… at delivering news that will hurt a family. Like you said, there will never be anything bad about caring. More people should care, in fact.”

“But?” Anne prompts, tilting her head to the side, knowing him too well to let him stop there.

When he straightens up, she looks closely at his face, paying attention to the little ticks in his face as he thinks.

“But I’m not convinced that it’s not the type of thing you don’t bury in your soul. Every time I do it and do it well, the looks on their faces still stay with me for hours after, just the same as if I had done it poorly. I’ve so far been incapable of letting it go when a patient dies who I believe I could have saved. And those things… I don’t know if I’ll ever learn how to shake them off.”

She moves closer to him, placing her hand on his arm.

“You need someone to talk to about it,” she says earnestly. “Someone to help you make sense of it and forget about it. To share some of the burden.”

Gilbert’s hand moves towards hers, just for a moment. Then he remembers himself and drops it uselessly to his side.

“I don’t have that, you see,” he says to the ground. “Much as I would want it.”

Overwhelmed by the hidden meaning behind his honesty, Anne takes a step back.

“The grand plan here is to drive yourself into the ground, then?” she says flatly, crossing her arms over her chest. Even though the sun is still shining down on the two of them, its bright rays seem to have faded somewhat. Gilbert suddenly seems paler and smaller to her.

“I promise you it’s not,” he says, chuckling at her dramatics. “The plan is to… figure out how to keep my ideals, my heart, my family, and my sanity all at the same time.”

“A tall order.”

“Especially when Bash is one’s family,” Gilbert jokes, glancing fondly at the house. “But I’ll figure it out eventually, Anne-girl.”

She sighs, releasing some of the guilty tension she is feeling at the sweetness in his tone.

“I believe you will,” she admits. “You always do.”

“And at that point, I’m at the front of the classroom with the two students who are incapable of understanding the concept of an algebraic equation, and I hear a wave of giggles behind me from the other students. I turn around to see what they’re doing and they all look completely innocent, as if they’ve been watching the two kids up front innocently the entire time.”

“It didn’t occur to you when you took the post that you can’t trust rich children?”

Anne straightens up at his teasing voice.

“No, it most certainly did not!”

“Just checking. Please proceed.” He grins.

“So I look back at the board, but something is off. It’s completely silent, not even notes being passed.”

“That’s terrifying.”

“Oh, it is,” Anne confirms.

“And when you turn around to check again, what do you see?”

“Sewing scissors,” Anne says plainly. “About to cut the hair off of my blissfully unaware new student.”

Gilbert groans.

“Oh, kids are the worst. I remember one time when Charlie almost cut Jane’s hair. I thought she was about to murder him.”

“Thank goodness I caught them,” says Anne. “After that, the kids started to think I had eyes in the back of my head and they were less inclined to tease the new teacher.”

Among early evening air, Anne can hear crickets beginning to sing to each other in the distance. She waits as Gilbert muses upon his next question, taking the opportunity to enjoy their surroundings. Roy had telephoned earlier that day to postpone his visit again and she finds herself glad to have this moment to quietly savor the calm of home, despite her initial flash of disappointment.

“Do you miss your students when they leave?” he asks eventually, sounding thoughtful.

“I do.” It’s not something she likes to think about, but she does tend to linger in it, to miss the steadiness that the students provide her throughout the year. “I read their essays, I listen to them spell out words, I watch them debate each other and develop friendships and have bad days, and then one day… I just never get to see them again.”

“I can’t imagine that’s easy.”

No one has ever said anything like that to Anne before. She feels her cheeks warming a little bit with the joy of being seen, of being listened to, of being understood without even having to try for it.

“For someone who’s had a lot of change in her life, I suppose I’ve never made friends with it.”

“Here I was thinking that you could make friends with nearly anyone.”

She laughs and hears Gilbert laugh beside her, laugh with her. It’s full of admiration. Anne feels herself gathering strength from it that she hadn’t realized she needed.

“I feel like I’ll always have to apologize to you for how I treated you when we were younger,” she says. “I was… abhorrent.”

“I can genuinely say to you that I liked the attention.”

She looks over at him in disbelief and Gilbert shrugs.

“I liked you. I didn’t much care that you were obnoxious towards me, as long as it was ours.”

“Even as we got older?”

“You got nicer when we got older,” admits Gilbert. “And I got a bit of my confidence around you back, once you quit yelling at me every time I opened my mouth.”

He sounds so sensible about it, like it’s a reasonable expectation of behavior for any young girl who has a crush that she doesn’t want to have.

“I’m sorry,” Anne says again.

“Truly,” replies Gilbert. “I only look upon those memories fondly.”

She wars with herself for a moment, fighting the urge to defend her past behavior.

“To be fair to me,” Anne says, losing the battle, “you were off limits.”

Gilbert’s eyebrows shoot up to his hairline.

“Excuse me?”

“You were off limits because Ruby had dibs.”

Gilbert barks out a laugh.

“Ruby Spurgeon?”

“Oh.” Anne grimaces. “I’m still not used to that. But yes, Ruby Spurgeon. She talked about you nonstop, and frankly, I was downright sick of you.”

She nudges him gently to let him know that she’s teasing and Gilbert stuffs his hands into the front pockets of his trousers, grinning.

“Yeah, we were in very different places at that point.”

“I have students who act like us,” Anne says without thinking. Gilbert glances at her slyly.

“Oh? And you noticed?”

“Of course I did,” sniffs Anne. “They’re incredibly annoying. I don’t envy Miss Stacy at all.”

“I’m going to need some proof,” decides Gilbert. “What makes you think they’re acting like we did? Don’t you know we’re special?”

Anne rolls her eyes towards the evening sky.

“They argue constantly, he stares at her when he’s supposed to be reading, and every time he pays her any sort of attention, she’s distracted for a minimum of twenty minutes.”

“Guarantee you those kids wind up married as soon as they graduate,” Gilbert says nonchalantly, then swiftly changes the subject as though nothing he’d said had the capacity to knock Anne right off her feet.

Without thinking about it, Anne wakes up one morning and dresses like she used to.

She doesn’t realize it until she’s down the stairs and in the yard, collecting eggs from her favorite chickens and telling them all about how well her evening had gone. Gilbert had come over for dinner again and seeing the rapport that he had developed with Marilla over the years had warmed Anne more than their evening tea ever could. She hadn’t quite understood how much Gilbert and Bash had been taking care of Matthew and Marilla until now. She will never stop being grateful to them for it.

But when Gilbert Blythe walks through the gate towards her, raising his hand in a wave, she glances down at herself and realizes what a mess she is. She’s wearing one of her old button down shirts and a long brown skirt that Marilla had made her for muddy days on the farm. She’s not wearing a corset, but a belt is cinched at her waist, giving her shape that she hadn’t had when she was younger anyways.

Despite the fact that she hadn’t been expecting Gilbert, she feels guilty, like she’d done something so untoward that Mrs. Lynde would be around the corner to admonish her for it any moment.

Lately, even though she’s in Avonlea, she’s been dressing like a Charlottetown schoolteacher who could run into her pupils at any moment. But this morning she had woken up so relaxed and happy that she had barely paid mind to what she was doing when she got herself ready for the day. There’s something about elegant bodices and uncomfortable corsets that reminds Anne that her stay in Avonlea is temporary. Come fall, she will be back to the city, to the life that she has chosen time and time again.

Facing Gilbert without the protection of those reminders is more than Anne wants to deal with before breakfast.

“Hello,” she says, tucking her basket of eggs into the crook of her elbow and heading across the grass towards him. “To what do I owe the pleasure?”

He looks like he’s stuck. He doesn’t say anything, just staring at her like she’s more brilliant than the sun that had risen over his farm in the morning. His eyes trace her frame, the buttons of her shirt, the way her waist dips where the belt is pulled tight. When he finally meets her gaze once more, she watches as he subconsciously darts his tongue out to wet his lips.

Anne turns red. Gilbert clears his throat.

“You, uh. You look like Miss Stacy,” he says, gesturing to her outfit. “With your hair like that and… you know, the.” He stops talking promptly, shaking his head as though attempting to clear it of any extraneous thoughts. “Anyways. I brought you the book we discussed on our walk yesterday.”

He sticks his arm out stiffly, offering her the book, which Anne takes with a grateful nod.

“Will you walk with me while I water my flowers?” asks Anne, gesturing towards the patch. “It’s ever so much more fun when there’s someone to admire the blossoms with you.”

Gilbert rubs his hand against the back of his neck, cheeks still flushed from his reaction to seeing her sans corset. Anne, feeling the heavy burden of currently being the more mature person in this interaction, graciously chooses to ignore it.

“Of course,” he replies, then falls in line behind her as Anne fetches the watering can where she’d set it aside the day before.

If she’d been expecting ease after the change of subject, she had been sorely mistaken. Gilbert can’t seem to think of a single thing to say. Only then does it occur to Anne what not having a wife means for him on a larger scale. She jerks to a halt, nearly spilling all of the contents of the watering can out when Gilbert bumps into her.

“Oh, I’m sorry Gilbert,” she says, hand flying to her mouth in embarrassment. “I suppose I’m not fully awake yet.”

She turns around and her breath catches when she finds him directly behind her, head bent low so that he can look into her eyes. Gilbert is always curved towards her like this, as if her body is the moon that his tides bend to. It comes so naturally to him that Anne is certain he doesn’t realize he’s doing it, but standing here in her garden in the cool morning, neither of them seems to have the strength it takes to move away. She’s fixated on his eyes in a way that she hasn’t been in a long time, tilting her head to the side so that she can see everything that lies there. He watches her carefully, his breath staggering across her skin shakily as he tries not to move. Anne wonders if he is afraid he’ll startle her away.

There’s no chance of that, not when her heart is pounding violently against her ribcage, filling her veins with the type of emotions she hasn’t felt in a long time. Finally giving into her instincts, Anne slowly raises her hand to his cheek and brushes her knuckles against it. Gilbert tilts into her, just a little, just enough for her to lose her breath, and it feels so right to be able to look at him like this without moving away. She doesn’t think she’ll need to look at another sight ever again as long as she has one this beautiful to gaze upon.

Almost as if in a trance, Anne unfolds her fingers and lets her hand trail down to Gilbert’s jaw. As she makes her way down to his admirable chin, his hand quickly wraps around her wrist, stopping her from moving any further.

“Roy,” he says, voice thick with emotion. He barely manages to get it out, but he lets out a relieved exhale when the name is tossed between the two of them.

It startles Anne out of her reverie, causing her to take a few steps backwards in a futile effort to put some distance between Gilbert and her pounding heart. It’s only useless because she feels that she has left it somewhere on the grass between them, beating so evidently that there is no chance he could miss it.

“Roy.”

She repeats it for herself more than for him, but Gilbert cringes as though she’d struck him. To give him a moment, Anne bends down and picks up the watering can, squeezing it tight so that it digs into her fingers.

Eventually, she manages to clear her throat and turns to the flowers, sprinkling them with too much water and incapable of caring in that moment.

“What’s he like?” asks Gilbert suddenly. She looks at him over her shoulder, startled, and he shrugs. “Please. I have to know.”

Anne thinks about it far too long, trying to come up with any words that aren’t Gilbert’s name and finding such a task nearly impossible.

“His favorite poet is Tennyson,” she starts. She tilts her head back towards the house and stares at it without seeing it, unable to look at Gilbert while she speaks of her fiance. “He likes to read to me in the afternoon and his voice is so musical that it can lull me right to sleep. And he’s smart, but in a different way than we are. He can navigate society with such ease, as though he belongs in every room he walks into. Or, moreso… every room belongs to him.”

“And how did you meet?” inquires Gilbert. She can hear the struggle of him trying to keep his voice conversational and wishes he wouldn’t ask that.

“Under a gazebo in a rainstorm.” Despite the heaviness in her stomach, Anne can’t help but smile at the memory. “We were both out for walks and got trapped in a storm. And I looked at him and I knew… I knew that he was looking at me the way men in stories looked at the women they loved.”

An uncomfortable ache in her throat tells her that she’s gone too far. Anne clears her throat, turning around to face whatever emotion Gilbert is feelings, perhaps to apologize, and finds his expression inscrutable.

“He sounds like your romantic ideal,” he says eventually. “I’m so pleased that you feel loved by someone, Anne.”

Just by looking at him, she knows how much he means it.

“Thank you,” she mutters, instead of replying then why don’t I feel about him the way I used to feel about you?

Marilla ducks her head out the door, rescuing her from blurting it out.

“Anne! Come in for breakfast, please.”

“Would you like to—?” begins Anne, just as Gilbert says “I should really get going.”

“Of course.” She nods, biting on her lower lip nervously. “I’ll see you…?”

“Tomorrow,” he says stiffly, causing her heart to sink a little. It’ll be the first time they skipped a walk in a month and a half.

“Tomorrow.”

She watches him retreat from Green Gables and can’t shake the feeling that she’d gone about their conversation in all the wrong ways.

“Next time you have a baby, I would appreciate it if you could be due in the winter instead of the summer,” Anne informs Diana. “Knitting a baby blanket in this weather is extraordinarily unpleasant.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” replies Diana wryly, adjusting her needlepoint so that it rests more comfortably on her stomach. “Although I’ll remind you that you’ve had several months to prepare. It’s not my fault you procrastinated.”

“True enough, dearest Diana,” says Anne, tipping her knitting needles in a strange salute to her bosom friend.

“So tell me,” Diana says, leaning forward conspiratorially, “how are things with Gilbert?”

Ever since her stomach has become too large for her to comfortably play piano, Diana has become unfathomably bored and is now giving Mrs. Lynde a run for her money as town gossip. The eagerness with which she latches on to every story Anne tells her would be alarming if it weren’t so amusing, but as it is, Anne enjoys their quiet sewing circles whenever she comes over to telephone Roy.

“Things are fine,” Anne says breezily. “We’re still kindred spirits, I think. It didn’t take much time to become accustomed to each other again.”

“Bash was saying to me that he thinks you and Gilbert are better friends than you’ve ever been,” notes Diana, curiosity in her voice. “Would you agree?”

“What were you and Bash doing talking about me and Gilbert?”

“I’m still helping him learn to knit and chatter makes the time just fly by,” Diana tells her nonchalantly. “And I notice you’re not answering the question.”

“I don’t know.” Anne isn’t certain how she can answer the question. Her friendship with Gilbert had never been natural or simple. That hasn’t changed even now. “I suppose we’ve both matured somewhat. There’s familiarity. We’re able to discuss things that, perhaps, we would have been blushing about six years ago.”

“Things like what?”

“Well… the other day he asked me about Roy.”

When she looks up, Diana has placed her needlepoint in her lap and is leaning forward in her chair.

“He asked you about Roy?”

At this point, Anne is becoming less and less amused with this topic of conversation.

“He did,” she says, not giving Diana anything more.

“Didn’t you say that the two of you don’t really speak of Roy?”

“We don’t,” admits Anne. “It seems better that way. It was… tense.”

“Good tense or bad tense?” Diana inquires cheekily. Anne considers throwing a knitting needle at her head to knock the smirk off of her face.

“I don’t know.”

Her voice is low now, face fully turned to her knitting so that she won’t have to stare at her best friend. She doesn’t want to have to say that she had felt something for Gilbert, something that beckoned her towards him like she didn’t even have a choice. There is always a choice, and Anne is beginning to wonder if she had made the wrong one.

“That must have been terrible for Gilbert,” Diana says, settling back in her chair. “Listening you talk about the man you love.”

“Yes,” whispers Anne, reeling.

“Do you ever think that perhaps… this might be hurting Gilbert more than you realize?”

Diana’s words are carefully put together and said in her gentlest tone. Still, Anne feels like her best friend had just slapped her in the face.

“I’m not forcing him to be friends with me,” she argues despite the fact that she is beginning to wonder the same thing herself.

“But he cares for you, Anne,” Diana reminds her. “If you’re standing in front of him offering your friendship, do you really think he’d say no even if it hurts him?”

The mere thought stuns her in a way that she cannot quite express. It paints her in a light that she is this desirable, irresistible thing. Not only that, she is a desirable, irresistible thing to Gilbert Blythe. It’s ridiculous to think of herself that way, even if he claims he used to love her. He’s Gilbert, and she’s Anne, and she knows which of the two of them is a better catch.

“Don’t be silly,” she replies instead of saying any of that. Her voice sounds fake to her own ears. She hopes pregnancy has thrown off Diana’s instincts somewhat. “If anything, spending time with me will remind him that he enjoys companionship. Hopefully he’ll be able to go out and find a wife soon.”

From the look on Diana’s face, she knows she has overcorrected.

“And you’d be fine with that,” she says flatly. Anne shrugs. “I’m not going to get through to you on this, am I?”

“Not today, no.”

“Alright then.” Diana sighs. “Just… be careful with him, Anne. Even if you can’t see him as someone who you could hurt, doesn’t mean that perspective is true. You pushed down your emotions, but it’s my opinion that Gilbert gave up and allowed himself to keep his.”

The hardest part of hearing that sentence isn’t Diana’s implication of Anne being wrong. No, the hardest part is convincing herself that Gilbert loving her even now could be anything akin to “giving up.”

“I’m determined to pay a visit to all the loveliest spots in Avonlea while I’m here.”

Anne doesn’t have to announce it, but she does anyway, wiggling her toes happily against the stones at the bottom of the brook. It’s not as though Gilbert doesn’t realize that they’ve been going to each of her favorite places every time they’ve gone a walk, but he’s always been so easy going when it comes to her whims. She wants to name it and see if he protests.

Unsurprisingly, he doesn’t.

“I’m glad to be your escort on these excursions,” he says, picking up a rock out of the water and running his thumb over its smooth surface. He seems relaxed here, far more relaxed than he usually is, and Anne is seized by the sudden urge to keep him right here until all of the tension has leached out of his body and into the water. “I heard once that if you didn’t have a chaperone you were certain to wind up in a ditch.”

She laughs, kicking some water towards him just because she can, and leans all the way back on her elbows, letting her head tip up towards the sky. It’s a beautiful blue summer day, warm even in the shade, and when she breathes in, the air tastes like the sweetness of mid afternoon. With the grass tickling the exposed back of her neck, Anne gazes up at the sky and quietly thanks the creator of this day for the gift before her. The wonderful clouds, the playful water, and the friendship of Gilbert Blythe, something she had considered long lost.

“Perhaps if Diana weren’t so pregnant we could have wound up in a ditch together,” she says, slightly woefully. With a comedic thump, Gilbert falls back onto the ground beside her, startling her. She turns her head to see him beaming as several of the greenest blades of grass tickle his cheek.

“But then you wouldn’t have the pleasure of kicking water at me,” he reminds her. “How would you bear such a loss?”

She’s mid-laugh when she realizes that they are far too close together. Anne sits up quickly and pretends that she is reaching out to pluck a flower, which she proceeds to tuck into her wilting updo, right by the ornate silver comb that she had carefully selected this morning. Silver looks darling in her hair, and she’d wanted to be pretty. Now, though, next to the effortless beauty of Gilbert’s cheekbones and the pink of his lips, she feels rather foolish.

“I miss the water so when I’m in the city,” she says, voice more mournful than the subject matter calls for. “It's not the same, even though I’m still on the island.”

Carefully, Gilbert sits up again, breathing out a little heavily as he takes in her words.

“Do you think you’ll live in the city forever?”

“I suppose it depends,” replies Anne, deciding not to finish her sentence. It depends on Roy, she means, but they do not talk about Roy. It seems like that is the most important rule of their friendship ever since the one conversation in which he was a featured subject. “Although I don’t think I’ll be able to exist the rest of my life without living near some trees.”

“Oh no,” agrees Gilbert easily. “You’d fade away.”

“There’d be nothing left of my whole soul.” Her voice raises dramatically, calling upon the symphony of Avonlea to back her up. “Oh dear trees, if I could only take you with me. Then everything would be perfect.”

Even as she says it, she knows it’s not true. It’s not true because of all the questions in the back of her mind, all the uncertainty she has felt, all the disappointment that has filtered through her veins these past six years.

The closest to perfect she has ever gotten is small moments in her hometown, growing up among the livestock and the bushes and the stars that would glow above her bedroom window every night. Even when everything had felt like it was too much, she now recognizes it as the closest to perfect she has ever gotten.

Lying here next to Gilbert Blythe feels like the best of childhood and adulthood coming together. Every moment they spend together feels like that, come to think of it.

But she can’t think of it. Not anymore. If it hadn’t been for six years and one fiancé, maybe she could have. If Diana’s words weren’t churning endlessly in her mind, reminding her to be careful with Gilbert, maybe she could have. And perhaps eventually she would have earned the ability to parse the Gilbert she loved from the one she is friends with.

She has little faith in herself to do such a thing, so no. She can’t think of it at all.

Instead, she stands up and goes to collect her shoes and socks, leaving comfort behind on the sweet smelling grass next to him.

“I think I’ll stay through the summer,” Anne decides as she hands Gilbert another apple for her bag. Marilla is baking multiple apple pies for the church picnic and Gilbert had offered up his orchard’s apples as a way to thank her for having him over for dinner so much lately.

(Anne suspects the real reason is that he knows Marilla will volunteer her to go to the orchard to select the perfect apples for her pies.)

“You’ve nearly been here two months,” reasons Gilbert. When Anne looks down at him, where he sturdily holds the ladder, she finds his eyes bright with impishness even in the light of the waning sun. It’s as though he’s taking it upon himself to convince her to stay, when, honestly, Anne has already decided. “You may as well finish the thing.”

“True. And my apartment will be ever so lonely now that I’ve had so many people around constantly.”

“Not even your students to keep you company!”

“I can’t fathom the depths of despair I would fall into without family, friends, and students to fill my days.”

“You’d really best stay for the summer then, come to think of it.” He nods seriously, putting on his best doctor face. “It’s for your health.”

“For my health?” echoes Anne. “Well, doctor’s orders then. I expect I’d better remain in Avonlea until school begins.”

She hands another apple off to him and finally descends the ladder, noting that the bag is nearly full to bursting. Gilbert places a hand on her elbow, ensuring that she doesn’t wobble, and Anne would admonish him for thinking that she needed assistance if she hadn’t nearly tumbled into a ravine just the day before while she had been extolling the merits of teaching Shakespeare in her small schoolroom.

“He must be read aloud, Gilbert!” she had pronounced, stamping her foot in emphasis, and when his hand had wrapped around her waist moments later, keeping her upright, she hadn’t been quite certain that the dramatics were worth it after all.

Still, she thanked him then as she thanks him now, with a smile and a nod and an unwillingness to remind him that they most likely should not be touching each other, even when they’re all alone. It would be considered improper for an afianced woman to engage in so much physical proximity with a man to whom she was not engaged, but it’s different with Gilbert, Anne thinks.

She doesn’t know why. It simply is.

“Would you mind accompanying me back to the house before we bring these to Green Gables?” Gilbert asks, gesturing to the bag he’s holding. “I promised Bash I’d assist him with the evening feeding tonight. Elijah is up in the Bog for the evening.”

It’s a rational enough request, so Anne nods agreeably and leaves the ladder behind, following Gilbert towards his homestead. She remembers the first time she had walked up to this very front door— how she’d felt so angry at the fact that she’d been put upon to seek out the one person in Avonlea that she didn’t feel she could cope with. The rude adults and mean children were nothing in comparison to this smirking, snide, insufferable student. Them, she could deal with. Gilbert? Anne had been certain that his sole purpose in life was to punish her for existing.

Things changed so quickly that she almost didn’t notice. Eventually, the house had shifted in her mind, turning from a deep blue fortress to a warm, sunny home. Mary had filled it with good food, good humor, and so much love that Anne had come to associate such things with the house itself, and by extension, Gilbert.

Now, when she sees it, her heart rises in her chest slightly at the feeling of familiarity it brings about. Somehow, everything about the house in front of her makes her feel closer to Gilbert. These are the walls that raised him, the place he was loved, the place he created his own family. She hasn’t earned it, but she’s proud of him all the same.

It’s funny to her, how childhood had felt like an eternity at the time. She has known Gilbert for longer than she had ever thought she hated him. Even though they are on two different paths now, it is still so easy to fall into being around him, a familiarity and a care that lingers from their teenage years.

When she thinks about it, about the way their friendship still matters to her after all this time, she knows with certainty that what she felt for him then was love. When he opens the door for her and places his hand on the small of her back to guide her inside, she knows with certainty that what she feels for him now is unnamable.

“Bash,” calls Gilbert, yelling it across the threshold of the house. “I’m back!”

It’s silent for a few moments. Anne opens her mouth to speak, but Gilbert puts a finger up and tilts his ear towards the hallway. Suddenly, Anne can hear the pitter-patter of small feet rushing down the stairs towards them. In a second, a ball of energy has knocked itself into Gilbert and is throwing its arms lovingly around him. He purposefully throws himself backwards, letting out an exaggerated “oomph!” as though Delly has just knocked him over with the force of her hug.

“You missed dinner,” she complains, pulling back from their hug to look up, up, up at him. Gilbert takes off his hat and puts it on Delly’s head fondly.

“I was having dinner with my friend Anne,” he replies, pointing to the woman standing next to the kitchen table. “Do you remember Anne? She used to live here.”

Delly peers at Anne curiously, her hands tucked behind her back. Underneath Gilbert’s hat, the eight-year-old has her mother’s nose and her father’s eyes and one missing tooth that is revealed when she offers Anne a shy smile.

It hadn’t occurred to Anne that Delly might be shy with her. It hadn’t even occurred to her that the little girl wouldn’t remember her. Yes, Anne had felt awkward going to the Blythe-Lacroix homestead after Gilbert’s perceived rejection, but has it really been so long that Delly wouldn’t know who she is?

“I knew you when you were a baby,” says Anne. Her throat tightens when she sees the question in Delly’s eyes before the small girl asks it.

“Did you know my mother?”

“I did,” Anne says, crouching down. “Actually, she was one of my favorite people.”

“Anne is the one who made you your recipe book,” Gilbert says, hand on Delly’s shoulder. Her eyes light up. “Remember how much you liked her penmanship?”

Delly is about to answer when Bash comes rushing down the stairs, his feet hitting the wood hard.

“Home to do your chores?” he says, teasing Gilbert. “It’s about time you came back here after work rather than mooning over—” Gilbert clears his throat and raises his eyebrows. Bash turns around just in time. “Anne!”

“Hi, Bash,” she says, lifting a hand in greeting. “I hear you use my cookbook.”

“Often,” he says, taking Gilbert’s hat off of Delly’s head so that he can fondly run a hand over her curly hair. “You’re the reason my daughter has grown up knowing her mother’s cooking instead of the flavorless slop this moke tends to make.”

“Luckily I wasn’t around enough to ruin Delly’s palette,” Gilbert says conspiratorially to Anne. “Being in med school dozens of hours away absolves me from any culpability there.”

“And then he comes back and still can’t seem to do his farmwork,” Bash says, narrowing his eyes at Gilbert. “Not so many hours away now, are you? What’s your excuse?”

Gilbert shakes his head, finally nabbing his hat back from Bash and putting it on his head again.

“Let’s go then,” he says. “We’re holding up Anne, I promised I’d walk her home.”

“Oh, did you now?” Bash looks between the two of them, eyes lit with mischief. “So I suppose if I kept you I would be putting Anne out, then?”

A few minutes ago, Anne would have been happy to stay in the Blythe kitchen and discuss Mary to Delly’s heart’s content. But her heart is sinking deep into her stomach at the idea of a small girl who doesn’t remember her and a family that had continued blossoming without her.

She’d done this to herself, but it still hurts.

Gilbert glances sideways at Anne, who shrugs.

“I think I’ll walk home by myself, actually,” she says, not quite meeting Gilbert’s gaze. “Say hello to the animals for me, won’t you?”

She eases the bag of apples off of Gilbert’s arm before he can stop her, then turns around and lets herself out the door, suddenly wanting to get as far away from the Blythe-Lacroix home as possible. Is this what she had been avoiding all these years? The sight of a family that kept existing without her? Had she been avoiding the acknowledgement that hiding from Gilbert meant hiding from the life she could have been a part of? It feels so obvious now, so foolishly clear, that Anne wants nothing more than to berate herself for everything that has gone wrong in the past six years.

This is her fault. Nothing about this feeling in her gut, in her very soul, isn’t her fault.

“Anne!”

The door slams shut behind Gilbert as he runs after her, his voice loud even among the pounding of her heart against her ears.

“I’m fine,” she snaps, not slowing down. Gilbert, unsurprisingly, catches up to her quickly, easing the bag of apples off of her shoulders without another word. Anne stops walking and turns to face him, her arms crossed over her chest. “I said I’m fine.”

“I’m not enough of a dunce to believe that,” Gilbert says dismissively. Anne’s face burns. “What is it?”

She hesitates. The dirt path in front of her leads right back to Green Gables. She could run away from him. She could run again and he would know not to follow her. He would drop the apples on her front porch tomorrow morning and Marilla would be none the wiser to the fact that Anne suddenly, harrowingly, recognized her mistakes.

“I didn’t think Delly would have forgotten me.”

Gilbert blinks at her, confused.

“It’s been six years, Anne.”

“I know,” she whispers. “I think I was so focused on me growing up that I forgot the entire world was growing around me. And I hate it. I hate that I wasn’t here for everything. I hate that I could have been, and I chose not to be. I hate that I was too much of a coward to face the fact that you didn’t—”

She hesitates, trailing off.

“That I didn’t what?” Gilbert says, nudging her with his soft voice.

When Anne speaks, her own voice sounds small and thin in comparison to his.

“That you didn’t love me.”

He draws back slightly, his chin jerking towards his neck. It’s the first time they’ve referenced their shared history since they’d begun walking together every day. Suddenly, they are caught in the middle of a halestorm, of a moment so thick with tension that it doesn’t seem to belong in the day they’ve had together. Everything had been light and simple and full of joy.

It all seems fake on the other side.

“It’s my fault too,” he says quietly. “I couldn’t write to you. I didn’t want to… to bother you. To make you think I was pushing.”

“It’s not your fault,” argues Anne. “You never got a letter. I ripped yours up. I made a choice and that choice brought me— brought us— here.”

Gilbert peers at her curiously, his eyebrows meeting in a frown on the center of his forehead. She watches as her words hit him over and over again, until finally he exhales and his brows rise upwards hopefully.

“Anne.” His voice is muted and tense, as though every part of him is fighting against saying the words. “You know that we don’t… have to be here. Don’t you?”

All of their experience together has taught her that they are awful at communicating. She should open her mouth. Ask him what he means. Beg him to clarify. Off the top of her head, there are at least four different things he could mean, each more achingly painful than the last.

“You can’t say things like that,” she says harshly, instead, and Gilbert looks at her with doleful, honest eyes that she simply doesn’t deserve because she still has his heart and she can’t not break it. “I’m engaged to be married, Gilbert. It’s been announced. People know. I can’t just… hear things like that.”

“I know,” he says, voice strained. “But it’s not impossible to undo it. It’s not impossible to take it back.”

She can’t. She won’t.

“We haven’t seen each other in six years,” she reminds him desperately.

Gilbert’s words are slow and measured as he responds to her.

“We’ve seen each other every single day for nearly two months. That has to count for something.”

She doesn’t have an argument for that, her head is spinning, and she can’t stop thinking about the look in Roy’s eyes when he asked her to be his wife.

It’s overwhelming, the way she is suddenly comparing that one moment to every single interaction she’s had with Gilbert in the past two months.

“I don’t know what you want,” snaps Anne, even though he’s being perfectly clear.

“I’ve only ever wanted you,” he says sharply. “And I’ve never said anything to contradict that.”

Anne’s eyes dance across Gilbert’s face. He looks infuriated. A part of her is grateful that he is finally angry with her, rightfully so, because she is the one who had continuously made the mistakes that brought them to this argument. She is the one who had thought they could be friends when he still looked at her with those eyes.

She could apologize. She could ask him for time. She could confront herself the way she hasn’t been able to do in six years. She could do any of those things.

Instead, she turns around and walks back down the path, brushing tears away from her eyes with the heel of her hand.

This time, as predicted, Gilbert doesn’t follow her.