It was pitch dark outside and in the wee hours of morning, but Anne and Gilbert were still sitting on her porch, wrapped tight in blankets and holding steaming cups of coffee. Anne was sitting across from Gilbert, hair fluttering wildly in the wind as he admired her.
They had been up talking for hours now, from everything from old anecdotes to random thoughts that crossed their head to just sitting in comfortable silence and looking up at the stars. And thankfully, Anne had sobered over the hours passed. A headache was starting to pound at her head, but she didn't care, not when her Gilbert was right in front of her.
"What time is it?" Anne wondered. Both of them were wide awake, livened by the coffee and each other's presence.
Gilbert pulled a pocket watch from his coat and read out, "3:48."
"Oh Gilbert, are you sure you don't want to rest before the eight o'clock train? I won't think any less of you for saying so."
"Anne, I'm fine," he insisted. "I want to get in as much time as I can with you before I have to go."
"I'm glad," she said in a small voice. "Because I won't get to see you again till the holidays."
"Think of the bright side. We'll have two weeks all to ourselves, to spend with our families and with each other."
"I guess you're right... You know, I never anticipated having so much to talk about. I've never been pegged as a very fascinating person. Strange, but not fascinating."
"On the contrary, I could hold a conversation with you for years. And it's strange because just a moment ago, I had the oddest little thought. In the three years we've been acquainted, I've somehow picked up on all your moods and tells and the little things about your personality, but there's still so much surface level stuff I don't know about you, like your favorite colors or artists. After all, our friendship was tentative after Trinidad. I know you so well, but I don't know you at all."
Anne didn't say anything and simply moved herself to sit next to him, huddling in the blanket and leaning her head on his shoulder. He placed his head on hers, and they talked for hours longer, parting only after watching the sun rise over the pasture.
It was 6:45 when the sun was shining blindingly and the couple parted ways and snuck into their respective beds in their own houses, but not for long.
Anne saw him off at Bright River.
"I love you, Gilbert. Write as soon as you're back, okay?"
"Of course. I love you, my Anne."
Anne let out a soft strangled sound somewhere between a sob and a laugh.
"Goodbye, my Gilbert."
"Bye, Anne." He pressed another long and scorching kiss to her lips before hopping on the train. Alex was already on the train, claiming he needed to get started on the letter as soon as possible.
"Every atom of your flesh is as dear to me as my own," he called, sticking his head out through a window. Anne paused in confusion before melting. Her favorite book, Jane Eyre, he had remembered.
"We were together—all else has long been forgotten by me," she replied, blowing a kiss back. Whitman, his father's favorite. He smiled tearfully, his heart breaking another time with every step of distance he put between them.
Just like that, the train was riding away, taking half her heart with it. As soon as she started to walk back to the wagon waiting for her, the half of her ripped away was substituted with a gnawing numbness. A catatonic state of defense to save herself the pain.
On the long and silent ride to Avonlea with Matthew, the thoughts echoed through her mind as fast as the train that had taken him away from her. Unconsciously, she fiddled with the charm on her bracelet, the gem throwing rainbows as the rays of sun hit it.
Some vaguely cruel and humorous part of her chimed in with the thought that if someone had told her even just a year ago that she'd be pining over some boy (Gilbert Blythe for goodness sakes!), she would've dismissed them as thoroughly addled.
Matthew seemed to sense her dejection. Saying nothing, he placed a hand on her shoulder, squeezing it and giving her a kindhearted, if timid, smile. Tears welled in her eyes at even this simple gesture and she leaned against him as he directed the sorrel mare to Green Gables, to home.
When they were home, Marilla asked if she would like to help make and frost some cakes for a gathering at the Barrys' this evening.
Summoning a smile and willing it to stay there, she nodded, not having the heart to go on with her regular nattering.
As she measured out some flour, Marilla frowned. "You're awfully quiet today. Is something wrong?"
"What?" Anne said, resurfacing out of her thoughts. "Oh, I'm fine, Marilla. Just a little... knackered." It was half true. She did have a dreadful headache from the last night and the amount of alcohol involved. It wasn't half the amount of pain that she held balled up in her chest right where her heart was.
"If you say so. I trust Gilbert and Alexander got on the train safely?"
"Yes, Gilbert and Alex... are just fine," Anne answered. It was her who wasn't fine. She was just fine the first time he left, but for some reason, spending real time with him, as his sweetheart greeting her beau when he came home for his family, for her, it had ignited a spark in her.
She'd known she loved him for months, but being completely washed with his adoring affection over the past day, it was a different feeling. There was no longer the aching longing stirring like sparks in the very deepest part of her soul as when she had no idea whether he returned her love or loved Winifred, now there was a whimsical and wondrous sense of fulfillment and contentment, pure and unadulterated happiness. There was still longing, lots of it, but it was a different sort. It wasn't an ache of a schoolgirl crush, it was a fire, passionate and loving and consuming her.
But now that fire had been sharply stamped out by that accursed train that carried him far far away from her. Just as she had started to fall, he was swept out from underneath her nose, leaving her to hit the cold hard ground. She knew his dream was going to a school like U of T, that it would all be for the best, but selfishly, she couldn't help but wish that he was right here with her, trying desperately to cook something while she laughed at him burning a piece of toast or accidentally setting a serviette on fire. Or better, holding her close as they counted stars in the night sky or watched the sun rise over the shimmering Lake of Shining Waters. But he wasn't.
Right now, he was on his way to Toronto to get his medical degree, and it would take another painstaking three and a half years of missing him intermittently. It would be the holidays before she could make more memories with him, then spring break, and then the summer, then they would repeat that for 3 more years.
So much could change in three years. After all, it had taken them three years to go from bitter rivals to careful friends to lovers. She wondered what would change in those three years. Perhaps, would it take them 3 years to go from sweethearts to something else? Would it take three years for them to take their relationship to the next step, one involving rings and white dresses? She hoped that transition might be a mite faster, if not immediate..
"Anne? Anne! Anne!" a voice snapped her out of her daydreams and Anne did a double take when she saw that the cup of sugar that she had been measuring had overflowed into the bowl ages ago.
"Oh my! Oh Marilla! I'm ever so sorry! Oh, the cake will be ruined!" As she rushed to try and salvage the batter somehow, Marilla watched her with a pondering and calculating look.
"Why were you so distant, Anne? I'm sure even a knackered person, as you would say, can see when they are wasting sugar as such."
"You know how I am, dear Marilla! Always up in that head of mine! I was just imagining all the most splendiferous things to do with Diana and the others tonight! Mrs. Barry always throws the most sumptuous parties! I'm so extremely thrilled!" she lied, trying to summon some of her regular moxie.
Marilla was smarter than her theatrics and shook her head, refuting her fibs with a sharp "Fiddlesticks!"
"But Marilla-"
"I thought I taught you not to fib in this house. It is a sin. Now, please tell me the truth."
"Oh, but I am telling the truth! It is the absolute and complete truth," she exaggerated, shaking her head solemnly. "Why would I lie to you, Marilla? What would I lie about?"
"Is it Gilbert?" Marilla asked knowingly, fixing the cake batter with a couple quick additions and mixes and raising up an eyebrow.
"No -- well, yes," she sighed, giving in and starting to mix up the batter for the third and final cake. As if she could hide anything from her observant mother figure! "But I don't think you would understand, dearest Marilla."
"I'm sure I can try, Anne. I'm not as wholly incompetent as you think," Marilla retorted dryly, now buttering up a cake pan and igniting the fire below the oven.
"Of course that's not what I meant, Marilla. I just don't think that you could understand this particular matter of the heart."
"I'm sure none of your friends could either, so try me, will you? It isn't healthy for one to hold their feelings in."
"Okay, alright," Anne gave in, lifting her hand from the spoon to brush a lock of fiery hair behind her ear. "Have you ever loved somebody with such a passion, such a rush, that when they left, it felt like crashing from the very highest cloud to the cold and rock hard ground? You know that you are falling hopelessly, but it seems like they're entire worlds away! You try and try not to miss them so, oh but Marilla, every aspect of their intoxicating self haunts you like a phantom in the dark of the Haunted Wood! You think to yourself that it isn't a mite fair that they aren't here with you, but you can't get them back because that would be injurious to them. Then you wish you could go with them, but that would be ever so wicked and selfish to everyone around you. But always, they're an ever present part of you and when they leave, all you want is for them to come back!"
Although Marilla was a bit shaken that her young daughter was talking about love in such a familiar and intense manner, she knew exactly what Anne was feeling. It was an echo of the feelings of almost 45 years ago.
It was an echo of Mar, come with me. We can build a life together. Let's run away.
It was an echo of John, are you completely mental? I have Matthew and the farm. I can't leave.
It was an echo of slamming the door on his crestfallen face and watching him slink away through the window, seeing the glint of a small gemstone in his pocket and blinking back the accumulating tears in his greenish hazel eyes, running to her dearest friend Rachel's house through the back gate and collapsing in a heap of tears and hysterics in her friendly and sympathetic embrace because What had she done? and I'll never see him again and What ifs.
"I know, Anne, I know." Marilla's eyes glazed over with something, even she wasn't quite sure what. It may have been regret or longing or just plain and simple sadness, but whatever it was, it possessed her, someone who wasn't fond of touchy sentimental things, to take Anne in her arms in a motherly and understanding embrace. Anne leaned down just a bit to rest her cheek on the older woman's shoulder.
They weren't sure how long they stood like that, but one thing was for sure. It seemed Marilla's wondrously immaculate stitching was at work once again because slowly, both of the gaping holes in their hearts started to mend.