Roy proposed to Anne only 48 hours before Commencement, but it took less than 12 hours for the news of her rejection to spread throughout the entire campus. With the aid of good cellphone receptions and forward buttons, everyone on Redmond Campus—even those knee-deep in lecture notes and exam reviews— was soon privy to the "private" news.

Knowing Roy's friends could just as well have done the bean-spilling, Anne didn't accuse any of her own klatch of indiscretion, but she did desperately wish to (figuratively) murder the one that did start the gossip fire. Roy and Anne had been quite the power couple at Redmond, and all their classmates expected the upcoming ring-on-left-hand-fourth-finger picture to appear on Anne's Facebook profile any day.

But, no.

"I heard she dumped him because she's pregnant! With her old friend's baby. Apparently they reconnected when she went back home for her best friend's wedding."

"She did look moody when she came back after that weekend! How long ago was that? Like a month? Well, I guess she wouldn't be showing yet..."

"No! I heard from Anne's own roommate Phil—well, Phil's chemistry partner's roommate—that Anne is definitely not pregnant! Straight from the source!"

Whispers and murmurs of this sort became white noise to Anne as they followed her everywhere she went for the next two days.

She went to pick up her commencement dress from the cleaners?

"I heard she had to get that dress cleaned because she was wearing it the night Roy proposed, and she got mascara all over it!"

She bought a bagel from the campus snack shop?

"Well, she is eating for two now..."

She went to the bookstore for buy-back days?

"She's gonna need that money. No ring, no Roy, and none of his trust fund."

All of her marbles were long gone when the morning of Graduation Day finally dawned. Dressing in her newly-laundered white dress, Anne prepared for the day she had longed for so much. Years of studying, quizzes, exams, grades, pressure, and presentations were now to be capped off with just a few hours of extreme formality.

As Anne descended the moaning, warped stairs of Patty's Place, she noticed a bouquet of flowers and small box on the hallway's catch-all table. The note attached to the bundle of flowers simply read, "For Anne," and the box had no outward indication of a sender either. However, the sender did know her well; the flowers, lilies-of-the-valley, were her favorite, and as she opened the small box to reveal a fragile, silver chain and pink enamel heart charm, Anne no longer needed to wonder.

"Oh, Gil..."

If Anne had banished Roy out of her immediate thoughts, then she had packed all inklings of Gilbert in an industrial grade vault and sent it to the pole of Antarctica. Since the explosion at Di's wedding, Anne had neither seen nor heard from Gilbert, and she had been incredibly vigilant in refusing to entertain thoughts about her old friend as well. But now, those repressed thoughts flooded her mind and heart as the lilies' scent flooded her olfactory system. And one thought forced itself to the front of her consciousness:

"Oh, gosh! Does Gilbert know?"


Miles away, Gilbert tied his tie with a peculiar grin that had only recently taken residence upon his face. Only within the last 46 hours or so.