So this gets a little crazy, and I'm hella worried about you all are going to think about what happens. But before I say any more, go ahead and read the chapter, and I'll talk to ya once you're done :)
The faint clamor of the wedding party echoed lightly in the otherwise quiet, shadowy bedroom. Unsteadily, Anne rose from her chair as Gil uncertainly stepped toward her. A tortuously-noiseless minute ticked by where neither party spoke nor hardly breathed.
But, finally, Gil's voice splintered the fragile peace, and Anne drew her first, quivering breath in minutes.
"Where's Roy gone?"
"He headed back to Carmody for the night," Anne breathed, her hand finding the dull, brass bed-knob at the foot of Di's mattress.
"Ah, I see," Gil murmured, moving half a step closer to Anne. "That's good though; I need to talk to you about something, Anne."
"Of course," Anne said, her voice wavering nervously in the still air.
Gil's tone and expression weakened her knees, and as he inched nearer to her, she owed an incredible amount of gratitude to the sturdy bed supporting her.
"I need to talk to you, Anne," Gil repeated, combing a shaky hand through his curls. "The day under the cherry tree, I was so sure…. And then, the other day in the garden, I thought finally…. Then, when Roy showed up, I didn't know… but tonight…."
Gil sighed and paced to the other side of the room; frozen in place, Anne shifted her gaze from Gil's jittery figure and fixated on the pale door a few feet in front of her.
"Anne," Gil began again, his voice infused with an urgency that demanded her gray eyes' attention. "I'm still in love with you."
The breath constricted in her lungs, and Gil frantically approached her rigid form, seizing one of her white-knuckled hands in both of his.
"And I know you're with Roy now," Gil said, his words quick and chaotic. "But you have to know, Anne! I have not stopped loving you. Not for one, single moment. Not since that day in Mr. Phillips' classroom. Not since that awful day two years ago. And I've watched you with Roy, and I know you aren't in love with him."
Gil's words hung between them, and his worried eyes searched hers for any reaction.
The carefully structured foundation of Anne's life crumbled beneath her as Gil's accusations sunk into her mind.
"No," Anne began, wrenching her hand from his grasp and enunciating each word viciously and clearly. "I love Roy, Gilbert Blythe. We've been dating for two years! You don't know anything about our relationship."
"I know you, Anne!" Gil exclaimed, desperation staining his voice. "I know that you might love him in some way or care for him or like him, but I know you, Anne. And I know you are not in love with him."
Anne huffed at his words and extricated herself from between the bed-frame and Gil's looming figure.
In her ghostly, rose-hued dress, she strode across the gloomy, foreign room, desperate to escape this situation.
"I, however, am insanely in love with you," Gil called after her as her fingers touched the antique doorknob. "And that's how I know you aren't in love with him."
Anne paused in her escape and turned her head so Gil was in her periphery.
"I know the way I look at you," Gil continued, his posture pleading and his words passionate. "And how you look at Roy is not even remotely close to how I look at you."
Anne let out a shallow, wracking breath and turned her whole body toward Gil once more. In his deep emerald shirt with a blush-colored carnation boutonniere, Gil suddenly looked so much older, so much more like a man.
He was no longer the boy who announced his love for her behind Patty's Place on that brisk, charcoal-clouded evening. This man stood before her in Di's disheveled room and explained his unwavering, decade-long love affair with her.
She who had teased and confused and encouraged and dashed his feelings.
She who had flaunted Roy as a perverse progress and accomplishment.
She who now looked upon her childhood friend and nemesis and sensed a heavy bind slip from around her heart.
"Gil," she whispered, and Gil took a hopeful step toward her.
Anxious thoughts tumbled through Anne's mind, but she quelled them with a shake of her head and a purposeful movement.
Before a second—or even first—thought could materialize, Anne walked across the room to Gil and paused a breath away from him, her hand hovering over his chest.
"Anne," Gil murmured with a choke.
"You're right….I'm not in love with him," Anne said, before sliding her fingers behind his neck and pulling his head down for a kiss.
Gil's arms wrapped around her waist securely, and Anne's fingers twirled the little curls at the nape of his neck.
Gil kissed her with ten years' worth of anticipation and longing, and to her surprise, she matched his passion.
To her, Gil tasted like the wild apples in the deep of the Haunted Wood.
His touch, as his hand roamed over the thin satin of her dress, felt like autumn sunshine dappling her skin under the Lane's canopy of birches.
His scent invaded her senses like the first breath of home after a long time away.
Anne unlocked her fingers from behind Gil's neck and lazily drifted them over his collarbones and down his chest.
His rapid heartbeat pulsed against her fingertips, and Gil moaned as she brushed her hands over his upper chest.
In the dim room lit only by the twinkling lights of the party below, Anne felt Gil guiding her toward the focal point of Di's room.
Lost as she was in their kiss, Anne recognized the feeling of quilted cotton against her calves, but she focused solely on her hands' journey down Gil's strong arms.
Not breaking the kiss, Gil gently pushed her down until she sat on the edge of the bed, and Gil's knee displaced the lumpy mattress next to her thigh.
Gil lightened the kiss before pressing a line of soft pecks along her chin and jaw; any tension in her back melted, and Anne slowly eased backwards onto the mattress as Gil placed breathy kisses along her neck.
But as Gil's other knee slid to the mattress and brushed the side of her left thigh, Anne awoke to the reality of the situation.
Gilbert Blythe hovered over her, his fingers stroking the side of her waist and his head buried in her neck.
In the new Diana Wright's childhood bed.
Just a floor away from where all of Avonlea celebrated.
"I can't," Anne mumbled, her hands recoiling from him as if electrocuted.
Rapid, guilty impulses crossed her mind, and Anne pushed Gil off her slightly, wriggled out from under him, and jumped off the bed.
Anne rushed to the door, momentarily glancing backward at the image of a confused, messy-haired Gil sprawled on the bed.
But this time, she didn't hesitate; Anne sprinted from the room and skidded down the hallway to the echoes of Gil's hoarse voice calling her name.
Bursting from the Orchard's front door, Anne subconsciously raced toward the Lane; she longed for distance from everything right now.
From the wedding.
From her traitorous feelings.
From Gil and his warm hands…
"Why did I let him do that?" Anne asked herself, her heart clinching in pain. "And, even worse, why did I do that?"
The silvery moonlight illuminated the ashy-white birches as Anne slipped down the Lane toward Green Gables; faintly, behind her, Anne heard the crunches of a second set of feet.
Though she pressed on with all her strength, she knew Gil could easily outpace her: just as he did at the church picnic race so many years ago.
With shallow breaths and plenty of remorse, Anne's entire body ached, and on a manic impulse, she halted and turned on her heel.
Gil, only a few yards behind, rapidly advanced on her position in the middle of the Lane, but Anne held up her hands in shaky defense.
"Stop," Anne croaked, her throat swelling and her eyes watering. "I need to go home… right now…. and I don't need to talk about anything else with you ever again!"
Anne stepped backward carefully, and she watched as a wince of misery lighted in Gil's hazel eyes.
"Anne, I am so sorry if I scared you or took advantage of you," Gil pleaded, his arms stiffly at his sides. "I don't know what came over me! I just couldn't believe what was happening and I've been waiting for…. But I shouldn't have ever let it go that far, especially since you're still with Roy—"
"Don't forget about Christine!" Anne interrupted, the angry memory of the theatre ticket in Gil's cupholder flitting across her mind.
"Christine?" Gil questioned, his brow furrowing. "What does Christine have to do—"
"She has everything to do with it," Anne interrupted again frantically, shifting further away from Gil, though the phantom pressure of his hands still lingered on her waist. "And Roy, too! I don't know why I said what I did about Roy, but it isn't true. And we just need to forget this ever happened; I don't know what possessed me, but I know it was a mistake!"
"So you're telling me that meant nothing?" Gil asked, striding toward the trembling woman. "That the way you kissed me was purely a reaction? That you didn't feel every last second of that the way I did? That you take back what you said about Roy, and we'll forget everything—and I mean, everything—that's happened between us?"
Anne stared at the plush green grass beneath her feet and let the moment drift between them.
The roar of retreating vehicles reverberated down the alley of birches, and a placid breeze whistled faintly through the leaves above them.
Anne's mind throbbed with doubts and resolves and guilt and quickly-banished longing before she finally chose her path.
"I love Roy, and he loves me," Anne began, squaring her shoulders confidently. "What happened between us was a mistake, and as our history has proved, any kind of relationship between us will ultimately fail, and with Roy, I don't have that kind of track record, Gil. So, yes, I will do my best to put everything that happened this weekend behind me."
At her tone's finality and malice, Gil's jaw clenched, and his demeanor morphed into haughty indifference.
"Consider it done on my half," Gil said, his posture harsh and his eyes cold.
"Good," Anne declared, clearly and sharply.
The night's peaceful atmosphere contrasted bitingly with the pyrrhic war waging between them; ghostly farewells and shouts from the departing wedding guests mocked the estranged pair, and nighttime chirps cheerfully scored their strained climate.
Finally, Gil tossed his head to one side and let out a deep breath; his gaze drifted to Anne's one last time, and he shook his head slightly.
Anne watched as he paused for a moment more before abruptly turning and briskly retreating down the Lane.
Alone, finally, Anne crumpled to the ground and let out a shuddering sob.
The twinkling lights from Orchard Slope gradually faded, and the last blissful wedding guests started home.
Crazy, right? I don't know what made my characters do that, but it was hardly me. So let me know if that seemed out of character or weird or just insane. Be honest because I would love to hear your opinion.
Also, to address some issues from the last chapter, I totally understand KBsMomma's concerns (about Anne telling Roy she straight-up loves him as opposed to implying it as she did in the book). So to explain how I justify that is this: as a modern retelling of the story, I try to imagine these classic relationships as they would be today. So when I imagine Anne and Roy's modern day relationship, I see they have two years of dating in college and I combine that with Roy's overly romantic and a little pushy personality, and I get a relationship where it would be weird if Anne hadn't said" I love you" yet. So I think in a modern setting, Anne would've said "I love you" a lot sooner than in the Victorian/Edwardian era when she could get away with just implying it. But yeah, I totally agree with you on how that's going to make Anne seem like a huge jerk, and I'm kinda nervous about exactly how I'm going to resolve that :/
But yeah, I just wanted to address that specifically and publicly because I thought that she made a great point :)
