Anne with an E The Next Chapter

Unappologetic

"How was your week?" he asked gently.
"It was ok" Anne said looking at the floor, unable to make eye contact with her one true love. "I was very busy and still am as you can see" she said going back to the work of untangling the vines and floral table runner.

The silence in the church was deafening and Gilbert felt a pang of pain as he could feel that Anne still harboured some anger towards him.

"I see.. do want my help?"

She looked up at him then, dead in the eye "I can't pretend everything is fine Gilbert I'm very sorry. I can manage this alone" she retorted. Her red hair appeared to be flaming against her fair skin and her cheeks flushed at her cutting comment.

"I wasn't suggesting we pretend...I understand you were very angry with me"

"Yes I was, I am...but what's worse...I spent an entire week beating myself up because you left without a word and then never wrote or sent any sign that you even cared that I was upset"

"Nor did you" he responded.

"You left Gilbert."

"No Anne, you left..."

She stopped, understanding that despite her complete rage with him, that this could be looked at from either side.

"Gilbert you know that I have...difficulty" it was incredibly hard for her to say the word "with being left behind". She glanced up at him, seeing him stare at her as she undid the vines and petals for their intricate positioning. His posture was at first somewhat apprehensive and then slightly defensive, crossing his arms in front of his chest, his eyebrows frowning in frustration. Gilbert was never one for a fight, he was much more cerebral and didn't mind a good debate, but this was personal. His thought to give Anne her space seemed to have backfired.

"Anne, I didn't intend to make you feel that way, I just thought you needed space".

"Space... how could you think I needed space when the one thing I was saying was that I wanted you to stay?" she said in a loud whisper. She glanced at the church doors and saw everyone had moved on.

"Yes but then you said you needed to go. I thought I upset you so much you wanted nothing to do with me".

"Gilbert, I've had enough people give up on me to last a lifetime and you leaving for the week and not letting me know that things were ok... that was incredibly painful for me". At this point, Anne felt the surge of emotions she'd been managing like a yoyo for the last week, overwhelm her every senses. She felt the need to hide or shield herself from him because she was revealing something raw and dark inside of her that was deeply shameful for her. She thought maybe this was too deep rooted to even share with Gilbert.

"Gilbert I can't talk about this with you right now.. it's a special day and we've worked hard to get Ruby and Moody here and I refused to ruin this for them." She averted her eyes and kept working at the runner which was nearly all undone. Gilbert moved in without a word and put his hand on hers to stop her. Anne stopped but kept looking at the flowers, unable to look at him. He moved in closer, his body not an inch from hers as she stood stone still trying to resist the urge to cry or run or punch him. She heard him breathing quietly and smelled his clean shirt as she closed her eyes to shut him out further. She felt him touch her face, ever so carefully, like he was going in to touch a wounded animal. Slowly he moved her face to his and said, so quietly she barely heard it, "look at me".

Unwilling to yield, she forced her eyes to open, tight lipped and seething but scared and melting all at once. In his eyes there seemed to be no hate or anger as she'd imagined. "I didn't leave you, nor would I ever abandon you. It hurts me to know that you would think that of me". He sighed and looked slightly exasperated but said " I understand that we can't talk about this now, but I am not leaving Avonlea until we do. "