Thank you all for reading!

Josie Pye had spent a good hour wandering the store, looking for something. What, she didn't know … but whatever it was, they clearly didn't carry it in Carmody. Restlessly she trailed a finger along the edge of a bolt of gingham fabric, her nose wrinkling in scorn. Gingham was for little girls, and she was not that anymore.

Then she looked up and saw a pair of broad shoulders at the desk, paying for a purchase, and she smiled. Things were looking up. Coming closer, she recognized the rich brown of the hair and the way it curled on the back of the neck—after all, she had spent enough time looking at that very sight for years in Avonlea School. Never mind that the head the hair was attached to was always turned in the direction of that pale, big-eyed snippet of an Anne Shirley, she thought spitefully. That was all behind him now … which left Gilbert Blythe very much available. Yes, things were definitely looking up.

"Why, Gilbert Blythe!" she said in faked surprise. "What are you doing here?"

He turned around. Josie felt a flash of irritation when he didn't seem happy to see her, but she pushed it aside. He always had been a little high and mighty, but that just made him more interesting. "Hello, Josie," he said politely.

"Isn't it nice to run into each other like this?" She slipped her arm through his as he collected his bag from the counter. "In town for the day?"

"Yes, running a few errands for my mother."

"What a devoted son."

He shrugged. There was something in his hazel eyes, a laugh that made Josie uncomfortable because it always seemed as though he was laughing at her—or at least amused by her, which wasn't at all the reaction she wanted from him.

"Let's go and do something, Gilbert. Here I am, here you are—why waste a perfectly nice day?"

The laugh deepened, his eyes crinkling with it. "I'm afraid not, Josie."

"Why ever not?" She maintained her smile, and her arm looped through his, but was beginning to wish she hadn't bothered. Handsome as Gilbert was, she never really had understood him.

"I'm … meeting someone later. Back in Avonlea."

Well. If that didn't just take the cake. It didn't take a genius to recognize that moony, calf-eyed look on his face, or to figure out who had put it there. "How nice for you," Josie said, not caring that she sounded utterly insincere. She'd never understood what he, or anyone, saw in Anne Shirley in the first place, and now to have Anne snag one of the best-looking boys in Avonlea, and the one with the brightest future … Josie wondered uncomfortably if she should have gone out with Moody Spurgeon MacPherson when he'd asked her. Then she tossed her head. Moody Spurgeon! Not likely. "I'm sure you'll both be very happy," she said to Gilbert, withdrawing her arm from his.

"I'm sure we will be, too." But he wasn't looking at her now. He was staring off into space, a daft smile on his face, and if he didn't look for all the world like Anne right now, Josie would eat her new hat with the striped ribbon.

She flounced off, feeling entirely unsatisfied with the encounter, and with life in general.