Hello all! I'm super thrilled to bring you a new story! It's been far too long! This one is a bit different and I'm not sure I can sell it, but I'm going to try... This story imagines how life at Redmond might have unfolded if Anne was the one who was in love with Gilbert and Gilbert played the part of the one oblivious to his own feelings. I had to tweak canon a bit in the beginning, with Gilbert finding a way to overhear a particular conversation from Anne of Avonlea that sets him up for what happens. So, if you can buy into the premise, join me on what I hope will be a fun, light-hearted (I won't torture them... too much anyways!), romantic retelling with some roles reversed.

Text marked with * signifies original text from canon.

I will do my best to post regularly and hope to do so at least biweekly. I wish I could do better but there's just not enough hours in the day sometimes. I am envisioning between 8-10 chapters if all goes as planned. Looking forward to having you all along for the ride!

~Lizzy


Gilbert Blythe bounded up the lane to Green Gables at twilight in late spring hoping Anne would not mind a late visit. He could have waited until morning, but he had barely had the chance to discuss the news that Anne was going to college with him! What luck he had! He never expected that he would have the opportunity to share that experience with her and it filled him with giddy anticipation. Gilbert had spent the last two years reveling in the joy of Anne's friendship. It was as wonderful and perfect as he expected it would be. He valued her friendship over any others. He always longed for her company, even if it was just to have a ramble through the woods or a good-natured row. But what Gilbert liked most about Anne was that she challenged him. Even in the days before they were friends, she rivaled him at Queens and pushed him to be the best he could. Their long, fraught history had taught him that Anne did not bestow her good will easily and now that he had won it, there was nothing he wouldn't do to hold on to it, lest he receive another slate across his head followed by exile. Friends! Yes, that's what they were, the very closest of comrades.

Though if he were being honest, Gilbert couldn't truly describe every inkling he had toward Anne as mere friendship, she was a girl after all and a rather attractive one to boot. With seven cute freckles on her nose, creamy skin, and ruddy trusses, Anne Shirley was the standard by which Gilbert had unwittingly judged every other woman, somehow always finding them lacking. For her beauty alone he might be forgiven for perhaps crossing the bounds of friendship once or twice, but certainly no more than three or four times, by imagining what it might be like to kiss her. Perhaps under the very same kind of spring sky he now walked below. It was never an unpleasant thought. And maybe two or three times he had thought about more, though decidedly more so in his dreams, which he doubted he could logically be blamed for. But those were just idle thoughts and unbidden dreams and even if he could admit to preferring Anne to every other girl he had ever known, it was hardly smart for a man of sense to begin romantic aspirations and ruin everything. He had worked entirely too hard to win her friendship! Though those grey eyes always captivated him, there was too great a risk at letting his feelings run away. Besides, though he was now on the cusp of the future he's always imagined, he had nothing to offer any lady, let alone one who deserved as much as Anne did. For now, they were going to Redmond together and that was enough! His Anne (er-not his per se!) was going to share this higher pursuit with him and it was thrilling. And quite an unlikely end to their childhood years when he thought back on them all.

All this Gilbert thought of on a pleasant evening walking up the lane. The cherry boughs were blooming and the fresh air was invigorating. He approached the steps of Green Gables when he heard voices from around the bend of the veranda. Though he couldn't yet see them, he heard Anne chatting with Diana. Taking a few steps across the porch to announce himself, he stopped short when he heard Diana speaking.

*"Anne, I'm going to ask you a question . . . a serious question. Don't be vexed and do answer seriously. Do you care anything for Gilbert?"

Gilbert stopped short and his heart began to pound inexplicably. Torn between being a gentleman and announcing his presence and his dire need to hear the answer to that question, his entire thought process was too late by several seconds as Anne gave a heavy sigh and replied, "Ever so much as a friend and not a bit in the way you mean." Anne's reply sounded calm and decided and Gilbert wasn't quite sure what to make of it.

Now it was Diana's turn to sigh. "Don't you mean EVER to be married, Anne?"

"Perhaps . . . some day . . . when I meet the right one," said Anne, in a dreamy voice mixed with promise. "But how can you be sure when you do meet the right one?" persisted Diana.

"Oh, I should know him . . . SOMETHING would tell me. You know what my ideal is, Diana."

Gilbert continued to stand there listening in discomfort, a dull ache forming in his chest.

"But people's ideals change sometimes," Diana responded, much to Gilbert's own unbidden gratitude. But Anne was not to be sidetracked by that logic.

"Mine won't," she replied staunchly. "And I couldn't care for any man who didn't fulfill it." She had particularly emphasized the word 'couldn't.'

"What if you never meet him?"

"Then I shall die an old maid," was the cheerful response. "I daresay it isn't the hardest death by any means."*

Too cheerful. She sounded far too cheerful about the prospect of dying an old maid and Gilbert felt his insides churn. Without another thought, he carefully and slowly retreated the few meager paces back to the steps, turned around, and stepped down quickly to take the very same path he had only moments ago just walked up.

He couldn't say what had prompted him to leave without at least saying hello. But something about the words, "not a bit in the way you mean" reverberated in his brain. Gilbert knew what Diana meant and apparently Anne did too.

Huh, he thought. Not a bit. That was rather decided, was it not? Nor did she hesitate. Not a bit. Well it was probably just as well. And though a fellow of Gilbert's confidence to be shot down so unceremoniously when he hadn't even attempted to woo the woman was a slight hit to his ego, he wasn't well and truly hurt by it. For that would mean he harbored some foolish hope and he had just got through convincing himself that his manifest interest in Anne beyond friendship was a man's natural reaction to a smart and beautiful woman. It didn't mean anything more than that.

Yes, it was just as well. They were friends. Friends. So satisfying! Gilbert would not admit now or anytime soon that the head he was allowing to rule the moment was drowning out all other parts of him that felt some measure of sadness in the finality of Anne's words. Perhaps, he reasoned, his ego was a bit bruised. But there was no feeling beyond that. He ignored the nagging feeling that walking away from the moment told him that Anne's words stung. That one long look in her grey eyes now might make him see something he was fighting not to. It flashed through his mind quickly before he disregarded it.

It was a bruised ego and nothing more. Thankfully, he finally remembered that he felt the same way. He didn't care for Anne that way. Not at all. Not. A. Bit.


As much as Anne had sincerely believed she had meant those words, uttered so effortlessly in the spring in the careless company of her bosom friend, she now lay in her bed, staring up at the ceiling wondering if she had gone quite mad. She had meant them. Undoubtedly.

But… That flutter. That queer little flutter she had felt last night while Gilbert's eyes looked steadily into her upturned face had given her more than a moment's vexation. And too many moment's of uncompromising thought, one more prevalent than all the rest...was it possible that romance came without the pomp and blare? Could love unfold naturally out of a beautiful friendship? It was the antithesis of everything she had ever thought, read, or understood. She had always wanted to be swept off her feet by a love-stuck suitor. One who would build her that castle in Spain. But somehow, this morning that sounded so...silly

Anne abruptly sat up in bed and walked over to the window to stare at the dawn of a new day. The rising sun was casting long shadows. Perhaps she was just being overly sentimental because of the previous day's festivities. The wedding of Miss Lavendar and Mr. Irving was a beautiful reminder of how life can be made right in time. But Gilbert's words echoed in her ear. *"...but wouldn't it have been more beautiful still, Anne, if there had been no separation or misunderstanding… if they had come hand in hand all the way through life, with no memories behind them but those which belonged to eachother?"*

Anne had made no reply to Gilbert's uncharacteristic sentimentality. She had looked up at him and saw, perhaps for the first time, that Gilbert Blythe was a romantic at heart. The tiny burst of joy that brought Anne at the time was puzzling. But now, sitting and reflecting on all that had happened, there was a veil that lifted from her consciousness and she was quite sure that it would alter the way she thought of Gilbert forever. As vexing as that thought was, it was surprisingly not unpleasant.

Yes, she had undoubtedly meant what she had said to Diana in the spring. But now, 'not a bit' seemed rather too final. Surely there was a bit of wiggle room? Or perhaps the option to alter her opinion on the matter if sufficient evidence presented itself would put paid to the matter now. She sighed out the window contentedly. Yes, that would have to be enough for now. With that, she walked over to lay back down on her bed, thoughts of Gilbert running through her mind and a dreamy smile gracing her lips as she drifted back into slumber.

And though it would take many more weeks before she would realize it in full measure, it did happen. A trip to a wayward apple tree, a feather light touch during a walk to the pond, a friend with whom to study at Redmond, a ramble through St. John's cemetery, an Arts Rush, being held in the gentle arms of Gilbert Blythe as he glided her effortlessly around a dance floor as though they were the only pair in the world - all those moments, and a thousand more just like them, Anne was forced to conclude that she in fact did care for Gilbert. And definitely cared for him in the way Diana meant. It might have been love. She did not quite know. All she knew by the end of her first semester at Redmond was that she cared for Gilbert Blythe... infinitely more than not a bit!