Anne looks around the hotel with curiosity, she truly expected Marilla to drag her back home to Green Gables, but instead, Matthew had sent them off with a key and room number. She hadn't been alone with Gilbert in so long, with him being away at university, and her back home. Suddenly it dawned on her that he hadn't seen her naked since, well probably Thanksgiving! She had changed so much since then, of course, he's seen her progress but seeing her naked?
She looks down at the rings on her fingers. Still feeling strange about the whole idea of being married to him.
Gilbert comes back in, with their bags one that Diana had packed for her apparently?
"Let me," he says as he reaches to take the flowers out of her hair and then the pins. Letting his hands run through the wild curls.
"I guess this is it?" Anne is still trying to wrap her mind around being married. "I'm surprised they even let us be alone…I was half expecting to be dragged back with Marilla."
"I think in their mind, the worst thing happen has already happened?" Gilbert says with a chuckle. "It will be nice though, to have you to myself. It's been too long since we had any time to ourselves. I barely saw you at Christmas, and I missed your birthday," He says, before rummaging through his bag and pulling out a small gift.
"Gil, I told you not to," Anne shakes her head.
"It was your eighteenth birthday Anne-girl, how could I not get you something?" Gilbert shakes his head and urges her to take it and open it.
Anne finally does and opens the long box. Inside nestled is a pink enamel heart on a gold chain.
"Gil," Anne says wiping a tear from her cheek. "It's perfect."
"Good, let me put it on you," he says, taking it from her and moving around and pushing her hair out of the way. "There it's beautiful, just as beautiful as my girl-," he begins.
"Wife," Anne says quietly. "Husband and Wife," she adds on before sitting on the edge of the bed, rubbing her stomach.
"Can I?" Gilbert asks motioning.
"You don't have to ask you know that, actually you should be able to feel her?" Anne tells him. "Actually wait, unzip me well you?" She asks standing up in front of him.
He does what she asked and wiggles out of the dress, standing in her slip, that was stretched over her bump.
"You are magnificent Queen Anne, really you are," Gilbert says, reaching out for the first time and feeling his child. She hadn't been showing up at Christmas, or just barely been showing. This was different.
"I feel so out of place in my own body, I wish I had someone to tell me it was normal, Marilla doesn't understand, and no way am I asking Mrs. Lynde about it, or your mother." Anne rambles. "I thought it is different, it always seemed this amazing beautiful thing, bringing life into this work, but I just feel so strange all of the time?"
"I'm sure whatever your feeling is normal," Gilbert says pulling her into his arms. "I'm just glad I get to be with you, it feels like months since I've been home."
"It has been," Anne tells him, "Come undress and lie down with me. It's like feeling butterflies or some sort of jumping fish, like the ones in the pond when it rains. She's so active lately, whenever she hears your voice today it's like she knows it's you and just has a party in there."
Gilbert chuckles but sheds his clothing, lying down on the bed her reaches for her bump. "Can you hear my little one? Do you know who I am?"
What happens next is a series of little thuds and knocks against his hands and later his cheek when he presses his face against the swell.
They lay like that until Gilbert wiggles up towards the pillows.
"I suppose this is our honeymoon?" Anne ponders. "Remember last summer dearest, when we planned to backpack across Europe? Drinking coffee and eating pastries, you would be looking into different medicinal things, while I would be writing my novel. Or the time planned to go, South Africa, Doctors beyond Borders for you and I would write a column for so national geographic and they would be all amazed by us?"
"Nothing says we can't travel with this one day?" Gilbert says, handing running over her stomach.
"I'm sorry I got pregnant," Anne says quietly.
"Anne, I was there too, if anyone one is to blame it's me?" Gilbert says shaking his head.
"What if I fail at being a mother?"
"You won't fail, because you have had some of the best examples around you. Didn't you say your mother raised independently working until she couldn't anymore to make sure you had everything? Hasn't Marilla taken everything in stride and comforted you when you needed it the most? You have so many people who are mothers to you Anne and one day when this one is grown, or if we have more one day, you'll be the best mother to them all and you will love them for all their faults and hair-brained ideas that will happen, because well you've done it all already," Gilbert says kissing her hair.
"I just want him or her to have a stable life, and to have both of us and not want for anything," Anne says quietly. "Even the guidance counsellor thinks it's pointless for me to go to college and try and balance a child and studying. She says it's neglectful to the child, and I couldn't fathom it being anything like that. I mean I'm trying to create an example, a good role model if our child is a girl, that she can do anything and that she didn't hinder my life."
"We'll make it work Anne-girl, together after you graduate and we move to Halifax and we'll make it work," Gilbert tells her kissing her gently.
Anne sighs, kissing him back letting everything wash over her and not wanting to think about it any longer. His hands run over the curves of her body and she pulls away slightly when he tries to pull her slip up.
"What's wrong?" He asks quietly.
"I don't look the same anymore," she whispers.
"You look even more beautiful," he responds.
"I have stretch marks and weird veins," Anne tries to explain.
"And I gained fifteen pounds from stress eating being away from you," Gilbert says shrugging. "You are carrying my child Anne and that is beautiful to me, of course, we don't have to do anything we can just talk all night and catch up. There is no hard and fast rule that we have to consummate our marriage, or sleep with each other just because someone gave us a hotel room?"
"I just…how does anyone, let alone you would find me attractive," She whispers.
"I'll show you if you let me," Gilbert says, looking down into her grey-green eyes. It takes her a long moment.
While still insecure, Anne allows him to try and sway her mind. Kisses over her jaw and down her neck. She always enjoyed his kisses, ever since she allowed him to kiss her after a year of trying to ignore him at the summer day camp that Marilla had signed her up for at fifteen. They went to prom together, and he went off to college, coming home for the holidays and writing her letters and the occasional phone call.
Kisses make her blood pump faster, and flushes cover her body, as he peels off her slip, he kisses down her body. Over the swell of her stomach, feeling the soft skin over the hardness beneath it.
This was their honeymoon.
Sex, making love, whatever they wished to call it, wasn't new to them. Clearly, her pregnancy was evidence of that. Still, this felt different as they relearned each other's bodies after many months of being apart.
"You need to stop daydreaming Anne, I have had all your teachers call me about you not doing your homework. Writing letters to Gilbert is not appropriate in class time, it's nonsense at this point and don't you think I don't see those long-distance calls, they are coming out of your allowance."
"We love each other and trying to keep that love alive Marilla!"
"You're seventeen Anne you barely know what love is," Marilla rolls her eyes.
"I know exactly what love is and I love Gilbert. It's not my fault you've never been in love or had a man interested in you!"
Anne wakes up with a jump, startled by her dream. She sits up in bed, hand running over her stomach, and she looks over at Gilbert who is still asleep on his stomach. It was strange to be next to him, in bed with him. Most of their time together in such a way had been in cars or the loft in the barn. Trying to sneak him into her room at Marilla's wasn't an option. Not really, and his room at his parent's farm was too close to his parents. So they made do.
Would they be allowed to share her room now that they were married?
"We aren't you asleep?" She hears him ask yawning, she quickly pulls up the sheet around her. Still oddly nervous about him seeing her naked in her state.
"I had a bad dream?" Anne says sighing, and she lets herself be pulled into his embrace. Arm wrapping around and settling on her stomach, bent and playing with her hair. "I was fighting with Marilla over you again?"
"Well, that can all be in the past now," Gilbert murmurs, kissing the back of her shoulder. Anne sighs, letting sleep overcome her once more.
They make it down for breakfast after a small sleep-in. Anne dressed in a pair of baggy jeans, that had enough room around her ever-growing bump, using a leather belt to keep them up and one of his flannel shirts she had kept one time.
"Stop looking at me like that," Anne tells him
"Like how?" Gilbert asks amused.
"You know exactly how mister like you're all proud of yourself." Anne pokes his chest.
"Can't I be proud, I mean you are my wife now, am I not allowed to be proud?" Gilbert asks her pushing a red curl out of her face. "I know this isn't what we planned but it's for the best isn't it? I can be in the hospital room with you in the hospital without worrying about being kicked out because we're not married and the only maternity wing close to home is the catholic hospital."
Anne sighs nodding her head, the amount of pressure she got about either giving the child up for adoption or the looks and comments from doctors about not being seventeen, pregnant and not married could be downright abusive at times.
"You'll be there for the next appointment?" Anne asks him hopefully. Maybe being respectfully married will make the doctors and nurses nicer to her.
"I damn well plan on it," Gilbert says nodding his head. "I've missed too many of them."
"When are you finished?" Anne asks after chewing on her piece of toast. Her cup of coffee was also in front of her half-finished.
"I'll be back probably at the end of April. Then we'll have until August to find a place to live in Kingsport and figure out school."
"And have a baby," Anne reminds him. "Fifteen weeks to go."
"We'll make it all work," Gilbert nods his head.
"Like last night?" Anne smirks at him.
"It wasn't that awkward, just took some repositioning," Gilbert says with a grin, leaning back in his chair.
"Promise me something?" Anne says reaching across the table, her pearl ring on display resting against the simple gold band. "We'll do this again for ourselves one day, but until then, if we celebrate anything it will be in May, the day we got together and not yesterday?" Anne asks him. "I know it was the right thing to do, but I don't want us to celebrate a day that wasn't as much a want but a choice made for us?"