Archive of Our Own

you will remember / for we in our youth / did these things / yes many and beautiful things

- sappho, fragment 24a (trans. anne carson)

Gilbert doesn’t show up to the bonfire after the Queen’s exam.

There’s a whisper about it between the boys that makes Anne stiffen, but Diana watches as she steadfastly ignores whatever she’s feeling, grabs the bottle of Moonshine to take a swig, and then gathers them all to dance like pirates near the fire.

Even after everyone has dispersed, gone back to playing games or telling secrets, Diana watches Anne spin and twirl, the embers spitting up behind her silhouette. In her tipsy stupor, Anne slips a little as she dances, but Diana reaches out to steady her immediately like it’s second nature. “Be careful, fair Elaine.”

The surprise is visible on Anne’s face when she realizes that it’s Diana who’s holding her by the waist, but there’s also an unmistakable light in her eyes. “Why thank you, Lancelot.”

The animosity between them that had been weighing Diana down for the past two days, making her cry more than once and depositing an awful sick feeling in her stomach, has suddenly been almost completely evaporated as she helps Anne down from old wood beam and blurts out, “I’m sorry, I’m so sorry for everything that happened! I –”

Anne cuts her off. “Diana, I’m sorry. I should have taken a moment to understand –”

“No,” Diana protests gravely with a shake of her head, “My actions with Jerry were unforgivable –”

“But the things I said to you were horrid –”

“Anne,” Diana says with enough finality to have Anne close her mouth with a clink. She grasps Anne tightly on the arms as she goes, “I never want to fight again. Ever, ever again. And I never want us to be apart.”

Anne leans forward to cup Diana’s face in her hands. “We won’t be! Not since you took the entrance exam!” 

Diana’s stomach drops. Suddenly the contained atmosphere of the night is broken. The rest of their friends are giggling together in groups, still passing around whatever is left of the Moonshine, but the alcohol in Diana’s stomach has all at once turned acrid. “I doubt I will pass the test, and even if I do, I know my parents won’t let me go to Queen’s.” When she thinks of finishing school, a dark, gloomy picture of life enters her mind, one with strangers and French men she doesn’t care for. Nothing of the soothing life Avonlea has given her. Nothing of the brightness that Anne has brought. “It just seems such a waste that I’ll end up in Paris, the most beautiful city in the world, and I’ll live there unhappy, pretending like I give a damn whether I’m finished or not!”

“I’ll follow you then,” Anne says quickly like she’s soothing a burn on Diana’s heart, “I’ll follow you all the way to Paris, and I’ll break you out of that damn finishing school, and we’ll live on our own in the city.”

The image of it is rich in Diana’s mind: the two of them filling their stomachs with French tarts and pastries, walking along the busy streets, spending the city nights wide awake and the days asleep in bed. “That sounds rather nice. Like a story you would write.”

“I’m serious!” Anne pitches forward to smack a loud and dramatic kiss onto Diana’s forehead. “I’d do anything for you, my dearest bosom friend.”

After that, they barely leave each other’s sight all night, like they’re making up for lost time. Even though their fight barely lasted a week, a week apart in Anne-and-Diana time might as well be a year or a lifetime. It certainly feels like it to Diana.

It’s only when they get back to Avonlea at some God awful time in the early morning that Anne brings it all up again. It’s when they finally reach Orchard Slope that she stops Diana before they say goodnight and seizes her wrist. “I wasn’t kidding, you know,” Anne says, her voice a whisper that blooms through the silence of the night, “About Paris. Even if it wasn't about breaking you out of school, we could go. We could live on our own.”

The serious tone of the words catches Diana so off guard that she doesn’t say anything for a moment. “You have Queen’s,” she replies dumbly. There’s a sentence that begs to spill from her mouth – And what about Gilbert? – but she keeps it under her tongue. 

Anne shrugs. “There are universities everywhere, even in Paris. We should just go.” Her voice is so steady and even that it freaks Diana out. She’s rarely heard Anne talk like this. “Imagine that – imagine us –”

“Anne,” she warns, and then forces a laugh to say, “You’re drunk,” even though it’s been a good amount of hours since their last drink.

Anne frowns under the moonlight. “Diana –”

A light turns on suddenly in the second story of Diana’s house – Mary Joe’s room – and Diana’s heart beats in a pitter-patter of nervousness. She looks to Anne and says breathlessly, “I have to go,” and Anne nods as she watches Diana run up to the porch of the house.

Diana glances back at Anne just once before she sneaks inside, and she’s surprised at how small Anne looks, her silhouette a distant black shape on the dirt road, like maybe she’s still that same little girl Diana had first met who was so nervous to talk that she just kept twisting her hands in the fabric of her dress, over and over.

A few weeks from now they will be departed from each other and Diana will spend whole months – maybe even years – without Anne by her side. The thought sours in her mouth like rotten fruit, but she only has a fleeting moment to think about running back toward Anne and gathering Anne up in her arms before she hears Mary Joe stomping about upstairs, and Diana has to shimmy inside of her house.

The problem is that Diana’s mother promptly smells the leftover stench of hard alcohol on her tongue the next morning when she goes downstairs for breakfast, and from there it is not a stretch for her parents to piece together the rest of what happened the day before, that Diana was not, in fact, helping the unfortunate and that she instead must have gone to Charlottetown.

This means that there is quite the blowout in the parlor that morning. Diana cries, her mother cries, her father yells, and it comes down to what Diana always thought would happen, anyway: her father gives her no choice and tells her exactly what has already been planned for her future, and it riles up an anger in Diana that has her curling her fists so hard into her palms, her nails almost draw blood. She runs up the stairs before her father finishes talking, taking the steps two at a time, and sprints toward the end of the hallway where her bedroom is.

She hunches over sitting on her bed, tears welling in her eyes, and suddenly she thinks only of Anne’s words last night. I wasn’t kidding. About Paris.

Someone knocks on her door and Diana sits up straight, incessantly wiping her eyes with the sleeves of her dress. “Who is it?” She asks hotly, readying herself to stand up against her father again, when the door opens without a reply and reveals Aunt Josephine

“Well,” she goes in that proper tone she always has, “That was something downstairs, wasn’t it? I hope you know that I’m proud of you for taking those exams –”

“Aunt Josephine,” Diana says urgently, suddenly starting to feel awful anxiety set into her stomach, “I’m not going to finishing school, but – what if I don’t go to Queens, either?”

Aunt Jo blinks. “Oh?”

“Anne and I, we’re – we’re going to go to Paris together.” Diana says, even though she has absolutely no confirmation from Anne, even though Anne’s mind might have easily changed from last night, even though a large part of Diana is so sure that it wasn’t a serious suggestion anyway, just a fantasy on the edge of Anne’s mind. “We’re running away.”

Aunt Jo comes to sit on the bed beside her. She takes one of Diana’s hands in her lap, and Diana is prepared to be ripped apart for the foolishness and immaturity of the choice, but Aunt Josephine just goes, “When would you be departing?”

Diana’s head snaps up. “You’re not mad?”

Aunt Jo scoffs. “If I said I was, would that really stop you?”

“I mean – perhaps!”

“Well, it wouldn’t stop that Anne-girl,” she says with a laugh. “How are you getting there?” Diana pauses. A boat, obviously, but with who’s money? “Where are you staying once you arrive?” A hotel? A boarding house? The streets? Panic rises in Diana’s chest all at once, and when Aunt Josephine starts to see it, she reaches over to squeeze Diana’s hand. “Now, now, child – it’s alright –”

But Diana feels like she’s seconds away from throwing up. “Oh, Aunt Jo, I just –”

“Let me help you.” She squeezes Diana’s hand tightly again, her hands soft and wrinkled with old age, the metal of her rings pressing hard into the skin of Diana’s palm. “Alright? I was young once too, you know. Young and in Paris, in fact.”

She winks at Diana sprightly, and suddenly Diana remembers the stories Aunt Jo and Gertrude would tell when she was little, tales of bookshops in Paris, the Eiffel Tower, champagne and cigars, the cobblestone streets, the galleries, all of it, like perhaps the only place the real magic existed was in Paris.

“Aunt Jo,” Diana says, wobbling at the edge of tears, “Perhaps I’m making a mistake.”

Josephine just looks at her, still squeezing her palm, an everlasting touch of comfort. “Mistakes are not nearly as exciting as this, my sweet girl.”

Diana steals away to Green Gables in the night after a tense evening dinner with the whole family where the only person who talked directly to Diana was Aunt Josephine – and Minnie May whenever she wanted Diana to pass the potatoes.

She signals to Anne from the window of her bedroom before she goes, the three flashes of light they agreed upon so long ago, and when she runs through the cool nighttime air, across Lover’s Lane and through the back pasture to finally end up at the front door of Green Gables, Anne is already waiting for her.

There’s a stony set to her face, cautious and tentative, so unlike Anne to keep anything back, but she still immediately asks, “Is everything alright?” when Diana meets her at the edge of the porch.

Diana simply stares at Anne for a moment, the way the moonlight bounces off of her slender cheeks and shines through her blonde, almost transparent eyelashes. She looks as beautiful as she did the night before, dancing up near the bonfire like she was Queen of the world, and Diana can’t help but feel her gut lurch. She reaches into the pocket of her coat. “Anne,” she says, anxious and excited and nearly nauseous, “Anne – Aunt Jo gave me money. She gave me money for us to leave.”

All of Anne’s attention snaps to Diana immediately. “What?” She asks in disbelief, her eyebrows drawing together.

Diana pulls out the heavy pouch of money from her pocket. It sinks in her hands as she opens it and pushes it forward to show Anne the proof. “See? She told me to just go. To leave for Paris. With you.”

Anne’s eyes widen immensely as she looks down into the little pouch, all the coins and dollars shining up at her. “Oh my dear heart,” Anne gasps out, “My rapturous and beating heart.” Her eyes flick back up to Diana. “You – but I thought –”

“If you’re serious, then I’m serious.” 

Anne blinks at her owlishly for a moment, seemingly unable to believe the sight in front of her, and then all in one breath she rushes out, “There’s a train that leaves in the morning. How fast can you pack?”

There has never been a question that both excited and dreadfully frightened Diana all at once. Diana just lets out a laugh, one that’s garbled with a mess of emotions. “My suitcase is already lined up at the door of Orchard Slope.”

Anne grins at her, wide and wild.

There are so many times throughout the journey on the boat to France that Diana wants to pull Anne aside and ask, Was this worth it? Are we crazy? Are we stupid? The questions bubble up inside of her anxiously every minute, poke and prod at the parts of her brain as she stays awake in the dark, trying to sleep. Neither of them speak of this nervousness, although she knows that Anne has it too. Diana can see it in the way she holds herself sometimes when they go to the railing of the ship to look at the sea; Anne gets lost staring out at the water, her hands grasping the railing and her jaw clenched tight.

And then they reach Paris. It looks like a mirage in a wasteland to them, girls who have been out at sea for so long. When Anne steps onto the solid land of the dock for the first time, she stretches her arms out wide and takes in a large gulp of air. Diana follows suit behind her with their bags in hand, lets her eyes close, and does the same. They both smell it, they both feel it; the shape of something bigger than themselves, and suddenly all that nervousness is paired with a buzzing, overwhelming excitement.

Rather than a boarding house, Aunt Jo sets them up in a building of flats owned by a friend of a friend. It’s apparent when they walk in that what they have is not much – a small kitchenette and a square that might be called a tiny parlor if it weren’t for the iron bed frame and mattress shoved into the corner of it, barely two rooms with a balcony squashed on the outside – but Anne steps right into it and twirls around the empty room without a second thought, her skirt billowing out around her.

She looks back at Diana, grinning from ear to ear, all teeth and freckles and bright eyes, and she goes, “Oh Diana, isn’t this amazing? I couldn’t believe it until just now that we would have a place of our own – but we do!” She laughs. “We do!”

Anne’s joy is so infectious that it lights up Diana’s face. She goes for a twirl around as well, the two of them giggling like the schoolgirls they used to be as they make themselves so dizzy that they fall to the hardwood floor. 

The ceiling is bumpy with paint, there’s a yellowing spot in the corner, and Diana can hear the hot water travelling through the pipes behind their walls, but it’s theirs. All of it, even in its shabbiness, is theirs.

Diana steals a look at Anne’s face. Her nose, slender and freckled, lips tiny but pink, her eyes blinking in wonder, looking around the empty space they lay in and the dust bunnies that gather in the corner, until finally her gaze lands back on Diana. She smiles, the action sweet on her lips.

“Anne,” Diana asks, her voice a little breathless, “Did we do the right thing?”

Their families don’t know where they are, their friends probably don’t quite yet understand that neither of them will be joining the class at Queen’s in the fall. They had just left – both with notes neatly folded on their bed, yes, but nothing more than that – and the only person who had any idea where they really were was Aunt Jo. 

Anne’s eyebrows furrow in concern as she gets up on her elbows to look down at Diana. She reaches out to tuck a stray curl behind Diana’s ear securely, and that one gesture is enough to have Diana feel a little calmer, like Anne is a cure for a sickness she doesn’t even know the name for.

“I think,” Anne says gently, her eyes searching Diana’s face, “that we are in for quite the adventure, my dear.”

Homesickness plagues them both, weighs them down heavy and often at first, but they find ways to pretend it’s not there. 

They take walks by the Seine, they drag each other into bookshops and bakeries and museums, they pray in Notre Dame, Anne’s bowed head like a little cherry tomato in the sea of black, they picnic at the park and stuff themselves with fruit from the market, they spend too much money on pastries and macarons until their teeth start to hurt from the sugar, they go out and drink until they’re sick, wake up the next morning with vows that they’ll never do that again only to repeat it the next weekend.

Anne buys her first pair of pants, tailored specifically for her lack of derrière, as she puts it, much to Diana’s eye rolling. Anne cuts her hair short – not short like that time Marilla had to chop it all off, but short enough that it doesn't hit her shoulders. Anne tries smoking tobacco out of a pipe and almost turns blue in the face from coughing, and Diana worries dreadfully as she pats Anne’s back. Anne jumps at any opportunity that comes along to her in Paris, anything that seems shiny and new, that will make the story of their lives richer.

It takes a little longer for Diana to adapt to this change of life. Anne keeps telling her, “Diana, you can do anything here!” but Diana still has a hard time believing it. She has nightmares of her mother showing up at their apartment door, and her look of disappointment is enough to paralyze Diana in the dreams. She’ll wake up sweating and gasping for breath, and in the hours it takes for her to fall back asleep, she’ll stare at Anne’s thin and freckled face and think about how this – lying in a cramped bed with Anne in a city halfway across the world – is rebellion enough for her.

For those first few weeks, a part of Diana convinces herself that Anne has done all this to escape the tragic romance she was, once upon a time, moments away from having with Gilbert. Diana mentions Gilbert quite a few times in those early days and Anne’s reactions are always noncommittal answers that confuse Diana to no end.

The tide turns when Anne asks her about Jerry, once, and Diana twists her mouth thinking of how sad his face had been the last time she’d seen him. “You were right about the fact that I didn’t treat him right, but I don’t think I ever really loved him.” When Diana looks back at those last few months in Avonlea, she wonders if she’d wanted to grow up so badly, to feel loved like the way boys were supposed to make you feel, that she would have jumped at the chance if anyone would have given it to her. She was lucky it was Jerry.

Anne nods at her answer thoughtfully. They’re on the floor of their room, Anne sewing up the small nicks in their clothes with Diana watching her while eating the last dozen raspberries they have left. Anne shrugs and says, “It feels like everything from Avonlea is so far away, doesn’t it? Like we entered a book or a play.”

They’ve only been in Paris for just over a month, but Diana understands what she means. Now all the moments of her life can be sorted into a distinct Before and After, and the moment in between them is deciding to go to Paris. 

She can’t help but take the opportunity to ask, though, “What about Gilbert?”

“Gilbert?” Anne echos, her face puzzled as she pulls thread through a pair of Diana’s stockings. 

“I mean…” Diana bites her lip nervously, “You asked me about Jerry. What about you and Gilbert?”

“Gilbert’s getting married to that girl from Charlottetown.” Anne says simply, and once again, the vagueness of her answer is enough to have Diana go mad.

Diana huffs in frustration, “Yes, but –” and then she shifts herself up on her elbows to look at Anne more clearly, “Sometimes I just thought – I think we all thought – that you two would…” she stops, unsure what words might hurt Anne if she says them out loud.

Anne just shrugs again and looks up to make eye contact with Diana, her irises a stark and clear green. “All of that seems a little less important compared to all of this,” she gestures to the room around them and the world that lies just outside, “Don’t you think? My mind is always full of plans of what we might do, or things we haven’t seen yet, or words of French I don’t know yet. What was it that you taught me the other day? Que veut – Que veut – ”

"Que veut dire ça? ” Diana finishes for her. She had been teaching Anne the barest of phrases, mostly things that will help her get around the city as a beginner at the language. “It translates to, ‘What does that mean?’”

“Right, right. Que veut dire ça? ” The words don’t fit exactly on Anne’s tongue, but her attempt at a French accent makes Diana smile. “See? I’m too busy thinking about things like that to think much about anything else.” She grins to herself as she holds up the stockings and shows them to Diana proudly. The rip in them looks practically invisible as a result of Anne’s handiwork; Marilla would be proud. “Look! They’re good as new. Très fantastique, oui?”

Diana giggles fondly at the excitement in Anne’s voice. “Oui.” She agrees

For a time after that, Diana still wonders if these are things Anne dances around because she’s too afraid to touch them, too afraid to admit to herself that she did love Gilbert, but the thoughts decrease as the days go on and on and on, as she wakes up every morning on the other side of the bed only to turn to find Anne’s cheek smushed into her pillow with a little bit of drool coming out. She accidentally wakes Anne up with the noise of her laughing, but Anne doesn’t seem to mind at all as she giggles along with Diana, wiping away the drool with the back of her hand, and then pulling Diana into her chest so she can wrap her long arms around Diana to keep her prisoner under the covers. Diana lets herself go willingly, not minding having to spend another hour a half pressed warmly to Anne’s chest and tracing the splatter of freckles on her shoulder.

Perhaps Anne is right. There are better things to think about than the boys of their past, much better things.

Their place starts filling up slowly, turns from being a shell of a shabby flat into a place Diana likes coming home to.

She gets into the habit of peering into furniture shop windows and eyeing when they have a sale. She buys herself and Anne a dresser with drawers that get stuck, but still work all the same, and stools that have been nicked from old age and could use a little shining. Stuff like this makes their flat feel fleshed out, like they actually live there, like it’s really theirs, not just some space they sleep and eat in. When Diana spends one morning finally unpacking all of their clothes from the suitcases they brought and puts Anne’s garments into the top two drawers and claims the bottom ones as her own, something soft and overwhelming claws at her throat. This simple act of domesticity, of sharing and coexisting in Anne’s space, feels like a girlhood dream come true, one neither of them ever thought was possible.

Anne brings stuff home too, but she brings home far more eclectic things rather than the practical items Diana looks for. She brings home piles and piles of books that the nearby store was – just going to throw out, Diana, I can’t believe it! – ones she can barely read because she still doesn’t know French, so she makes Diana read them to her. She brings home bunches of flowers that she picks on her walks around the city, and they tie and hang them up on the ceiling by the stems to dry them out. Anne lets some of them hang there to decorate the kitchen, as though they were living in a witch’s hut out of a story from the Brothers Grimm, but she places a particularly nice dried bouquet of lavender above the headboard of their bed and it makes Diana smile.

Anne also brings home strays, as Anne is wont to do. One night, during a funny summer storm, instead of arriving back to the flat with dinner, Anne comes bearing a wet kitten that she was certain was going to shiver to death in the street without her intervention. As the rain pitter-patters roughly against their roof outside, Anne and Diana sit on the floor near their furnace with a little black cat in a bundle of towels in their arms, desperate to keep him warm.

They go to sleep that night with the kitten laying in between both of them, curled up into a black, wispy ball. Diana pets it, feels its tiny rib cage and the heart beneath it that thumps and thumps so quickly even at rest, and she watches the way Anne’s face presses up against the cat as she falls asleep. All at once, Diana feels like she could choke on the love bursting up her chest at the sight of the two of them.

The feelings bursts when they wake up with an empty, cold space between them where the kitten had been the night before. Anne cries in on-and-off fits all morning, and Diana brings her food and calms her with words of how he was a stray cat, he probably went to go find food, he knows how to survive, he’ll be okay, but it does little to soothe Anne’s soul.

Three weeks later, a black cat shows up one morning on the railing of their balcony, and even though he’s doubled in size, he’s still small, wispy, and bug-eyed. Diana shakes Anne awake with excitement, and they gather the little thing in their arms and smother him with kisses, even as he meows against it.

He comes and goes like that from then on, sometimes joining them in the mornings for breakfast out on the balcony or occasionally coming inside for a sleep on their bed. He paws at the balcony doors if Diana forgets to leave them open and he pretends to ignore them both if he’s upset, but Diana finds it endearing. He seems to like her a little better than he likes Anne, much to Anne’s disappointment, and when he sleeps warmly purring on Diana’s chest in the night, Anne pouts.

“Are you jealous?” Diana asks in jest.

Anne’s whole face turns red. “No!” She declares quickly, and something about it all has Diana laugh so hard she wakes the kitty up. Anne tries to reach out and scratch his head, but the cat only further curls away from her and into Diana. “I just don’t know why he hates me.”

“He doesn’t hate you,” Diana says, rolling her eyes, and then she goes, “Maybe it’s because the two of you are so alike – he reminds me of you, you know,” and Anne gasps childishly in offense, as though they were still those girls back in Avonlea, getting upset over the most trivial of things. The look on Anne’s face makes Diana laugh and laugh and laugh until all her exhaustion has gone away.

The cat is back to rubbing up on Anne lovingly the next morning, before he goes off and does whatever it is he does in his disappearances, goes to live with some other pair of girls who dote on him, and Anne accepts this gladly, as though she wasn’t mad at him at all the night before.

They don’t name him, not officially, but Anne has taken to calling him Beau Cat, because beau had been one of the first French words she’d really learned and, “He’s quite handsome, isn’t he, Diana?”

Diana, distracted by the way Anne looks down at the cat with such an adoring gaze, the way she does with every little gentle thing in this world, no matter how ugly or terrifying the rest of the universe seems, goes, “Yes, yes he is.”

By the time it hits August, Aunt Jo has passed their address around to enough of the people from Avonlea that they get quite a few letters. 

The first letter, a little surprisingly, is from Green Gables. Matthew writes it, his shaky hand obvious in the ink of his words. It’s short and sweet, very Matthew –  he hopes that they’re well and asks what their life is like in Paris – but the lack of Marilla is apparent to both of them as they read it, and the empty space of it spells out her disappointment in Anne.

Anne writes a long letter back, and Diana asks that she include a small note to Jerry. It’s not much beside an apology for how stupid and selfish Diana had acted toward him. I hope you can forgive me for my mistakes and that we can still continue to be friends. She’s concerned he won’t accept it, but it’s all for not when there is a slip in the next envelope Matthew sends with Jerry’s loopy and childish handwriting covering it. It is no worry Diana. I understand now about you and Anne. I am glad she makes you happy. Elle est ton vrai amour.

Diana blushes furiously upon reading that last sentence. She is your true love.

Anne watches her read it from her place sitting on the floor. “What did he say?” She asks, perplexed at the pink in Diana’s cheeks.

“Oh – nothing. You know Jerry, he has a funny way with words… but I don’t believe he is mad at me, thankfully!” She clears her throat and changes the subject promptly. “It’s wonderful how well he has learned to write!”

Marilla writes to them a month or two later. Diana doesn’t read that one, even though she knows Anne would let her if she asked. She just watches Anne’s eyes anxiously eat up every word on the page until about halfway through the tension leaks out of her shoulders and she stops gripping the letter so hard that it creases in her hands. Her eyes are a little misty when she finishes, and Diana pretends not to notice her wipe away the little tear droplets that spring up.

“Is everything alright?” Diana asks softly, moving to wrap her arms around Anne’s small shoulders as they sit side-by-side in bed.

Anne just smiles and sniffs once. “Yes,” she says, “Yes, everything’s alright.” She laughs, a little wetly, and then leans into Diana’s embrace.

They sit there warmed by a patch of sun that peeks through their windows for so long that Anne eventually falls asleep. It’s only noon, and they’ve barely done anything the whole morning besides lazily eat breakfast and read the newspaper, but Diana lets her sleep. She watches Anne breath slow and deep in her lap, and she’s comforted by the gentle breeze that runs its way through their open windows, making the curtains dance and move. The wind jiggles Marilla’s letter that Anne had discarded on the bed next to them, and it draws Diana’s eyes to it.

For a moment, she can’t help but be horrendously jealous. Bitterness crawls it’s way up Diana’s throat and she has to remember how to swallow it down. What she would not give to receive a letter from her mother apologizing for trying to force her into a life she did not want, for pushing her so far away that she left the continent. What she would not give to see her mother’s hand writing spell out, I love you, I forgive you, it will all be okay.

Ruby writes them often, even when she has nothing really to report. Moody came and saw me in the parlor today. I thought he might finally make our courtship official, but he froze up! Jane and Josie are sure that it will take him at least until Christmas at this rate. I’ll die before then! She always ends the letters with some anecdote like, On our outing to town last week, we saw a bookshop that reminded me of the Story Club. We all miss you both dearly and think of you often. Please write soon and send us a postcard of Paris so we can dream about what your lives look like! Au revoir! The bottom is always signed with a red kiss of lip pigment. Ruby Gillis, ever the romantic.

Diana knows that some part of both of them aches after reading these letters – that the girlish misadventures and warm squabbles Ruby describes could have been the life they’d had if they had stayed – but then they’ll make breakfast in the morning and have it on their table that barely fits in their balcony, and Anne will be in a billowy nightgown she still has from Green Gables and Diana will have made them both perfect eggs that aren’t too runny but aren’t too firm, and they will laugh as they eat with the black rooftops of Paris singing all around them, their cat lazing about on the railing, the faded visage of the Eiffel Tower stamped in the distant horizon, and Diana will think, If we had stayed then we wouldn’t have had this. 

It makes her forget about Queen’s and the girls for just a moment. It makes her grateful that Anne, sixteen and drunk, had wildly suggested they come here. Most of all, it makes her proud of that scared little girl who sat in Orchard Slope every day, ready to resign herself to a life of finishing school and courtship, chose this instead.

Winter in Paris is a little less romantic than the poetry had led them to believe. While at first seeing the city all dressed in white had captured the heart of Diana and fed the imagination of Anne, they quickly realized that city snow is different from country snow. City snow gets dirty and muddy in less than a day and city snow piles onto their building in such big layers that their old, creaky furnace doesn't even stand a chance at warming them properly. 

It’s in this winter cold that Diana comes home to their apartment one day after a busy afternoon running errands around the city, and Anne brightly shouts, “Diana!” at her arrival.

Diana looks up at Anne perplexed, waiting for the other shoe to drop at what she could be so excited about, but Diana gets caught up in Anne’s little red nose for a moment. It’s early November and the weeks are starting to get so cold that every day Anne comes home with red cheeks and nose like a Dickens' character. Diana adores it.

Anne gushes out, “Look who I ran into!” only to step aside and reveal none other than Gilbert Blythe standing in their flat, all bundled up in a coat.

Gilbert smiles at Diana kindly, the same excitement in his eyes that were in Anne’s. “Hello, Diana.” He says, nodding his head toward her warmly, and Diana can’t help but laugh in surprise at the sight of him.

“Gilbert!” She exclaims, baffled, and moves to hug him.

Paris looks good on him. He looks healthy, even flushed as he is from the cold, and he is unmistakably still that tall and lean boy Diana had watched him grow into. It brings a smile to her face to see him standing so casually in their kitchen, as if he just magically appeared there.

They treat him to dinner, although dinner in their household is a barely scraped together thing of cheese and bread and ham. They sit on the precarious stools in their kitchen and Anne describes how she was walking home from a nearby bakery and stumbled upon a bookstore where she stopped to look for a Wordsworth book and ran into Gilbert.

“We bumped right into each other,” Gilbert laughs.

“Like it was fate!” Anne replies back happily, laughing with him, the two of them doing their classic back-and-forth. Watching the way they seem to light up in each other’s presence, even after all these months apart, suddenly makes Diana feel a bit like an afterthought.

“The two of you made quite the scene in Avonlea, you know,” Gilbert tells them, smiling proudly, “The whole town was jumbled after you stole away in the night.”

Anne beams, but Diana feels a little queasy at the thought of her parents’ distress upon waking up to find their daughter’s bed completely empty. Anne takes a bite out of her sandwich. “I can imagine Rachel Lynde had a field day,” she says through a mouthful of food.

Gilbert huffs a laugh. “She was ready to find another printing press and bring back the Avonlea Gazette just so she could effectively tell the whole town.”

The two of them laugh about it, their faces scrunched up in happiness, but Diana’s tongue feels heavy in her mouth. She clears her throat, eager to change the course of the conversation. “Gilbert – how have you been? How is your life here? How’s the Sorbonne?”

He smiles at her kindly. “The Sorbonne is good! It’s really good,” he nods, “I’ve been learning so much – it feels like the farthest place away from Avonlea one could go in terms of the resources they have at their disposal. It will surely not make a country doctor out of me.” Anne snorts at this, and her and Gilbert share a knowing look.

Diana clears her throat again. “And how’s Winifred?”

His face falls a little at the sound of the name, and he rubs the back of his neck nervously. “We – well, it didn’t… it didn’t work out between the two of us.”

Both Diana and Anne blink in shocked silence for a moment. “Oh,” Anne goes, confused, staring at Gilbert. “But you’re still at the Sorbonne? Even without…?”

“Yes, I’m incredibly lucky,” Gilbert laughs, almost in disbelief, “Even without Winifred’s father’s… sizable donation to my future, some of my professors there argued for me to stay and showed me how to get by.” He looks up at Anne. “They have grants for orphans like us, and there are other schools in the university than just medicine. You should really consider it if you’re going to be staying in Paris. Both of you should!” He looks back down to Diana encouragingly. 

Neither Anne or Diana had talked at all about what they were going to do with their future. The end of December marked just about six months of them being here, and it was starting to feel like their girlhood fantasy of living in Paris was on the edge of wearing itself out. Diana couldn’t help but feel like they both knew they could only go on living like this for so long, but no one wanted to say it out loud, do the grown up thing of taking responsibility and sorting it all out. They wanted to play pretend for just a little bit longer. 

“I suppose we’ll take a look,” Diana says politely with a smile and a nod, and then knits her brows together, “I’m very sorry to hear about Winifred though, Gilbert.” 

He just shakes his head. “It’s alright. Winnie was lovely, but – everything happens for a reason, right? I have to believe that.” He shrugs and smiles at her, and then his gaze flicks back to Anne, who gives him a reassuring nod.

This look makes Diana feel a funny range of emotions all at once; it’s a wonderful thing to see Gilbert, to have a little piece of Avonlea in Paris, but mostly what she feels is a striking and sudden fear. She and Anne had come here to escape the pressures of Avonlea life, all the things that were expected of them or that they didn’t want to face, and one of those things was Anne’s unrequited love for Gilbert. 

But now that Gilbert wasn’t getting engaged, and now that he lived probably around the corner from them, Anne could have what she’d always wanted: Gilbert's love and affection. This left Diana lonely and cold in the apartment, sure to end up as an old maid, all alone in Paris. 

Gilbert writes down his address for them before he goes, and Diana marvels at how they didn’t run into him sooner. He leaves after dinner, thanking them profusely with a wide grin on his face, and promises to come around with gifts to treat them soon. 

“And pamphlets,” he adds with a devious smile, tugging his coat back on, “About the Sorbonne.”

Anne just rolls her eyes and pushes him out the door, ready to walk him down to the street.

Diana sits in silence for the small minutes Anne is gone and she tries to remember how to breathe regularly. How soon will Anne and Gilbert start courting each other? How long until their engagement? Does this mean Diana should start looking for eligible suitors as well? She hadn’t even thought about it in the months they’d been here, she’d been so caught up in the life she and Anne were living that ideas about a husband had never even crossed her mind.

Anne walks back through the door with a happy smile on her lips, as though it might be permanently etched into her face now after seeing Gilbert. She looks up at Diana as she shucks her coat off and opens her mouth, but she frowns immediately once she sees the expression on Diana’s face.

“Diana?” She asks, her brows drawing together. “Are you alright? You look a little sick –”

“I’m fine.” Diana replies too quickly. When Anne’s expression falls, Diana has to turn away.

Anne walks toward her, moving into her line of sight once again. “What’s wrong? Is it something Gilbert said?”

Diana’s lip starts to wobble without her permission. “No – it’s not – he didn’t say anything.” She says thickly, doing anything she can from being forced to meet Anne’s eyes.

Anne is having none of this, though. She promptly sits down next to Diana and takes her hands into her own, holding onto them firmly. “Diana…” she says softly, and when Diana finally looks at her, the expression on her face is a mixture of bemusement and sorrow. “I don’t understand."

“He’s not engaged to Winifred anymore,” Diana says plainly, “That means you can have your shot with him – which is wonderful! It’s wonderful for you, but…”

Anne squeezes Diana’s hands tightly and goes, “Oh,” ducking her face down so Diana has to look at her again, “You don’t really think I would leave you here all alone, do you?”

Diana whips her head up. “Anne! You love him, of course you –”

Anne laughs and shakes her head. “I don’t love him. Maybe – maybe once upon a time my schoolhouse crush felt like it was turning into something bigger, but…” and then she smiles and looks around their tiny flat where the winter sun is peeking through their windows, “I live a completely different life now. I’m a different girl. I’m not the same Anne that was in Avonlea, but I’m still the Anne that is your best friend, that dragged you along to another continent with me.” They both giggle, even Diana, despite herself. “My loyalty lies to you, always.”

Diana glances up at Anne from under her eyelashes. Anne is smiling down at her, much softer than she had been smiling at Gilbert while he was here, and something about that springs relief into her chest.

Diana says, “I wouldn’t be mad, you know, if –"

“Diana!” Anne interjects, laughing, “Yes, Gilbert is lovely and it will be nice to have a comrade in arms, but I assure you I will not be marrying anyone any time soon, especially not Gilbert.”

Diana nods, mostly to herself. “Well, that’s good,” she says, “I suppose Matthew and Marilla would have a tiff if you had a wedding without them.”

Anne snorts and rolls her eyes. “Goodness knows I’ve already given them enough things to have a tiff about this year.” She gets up and stretches, standing on her tiptoes so high that her arms almost reach the ceiling. Diana is face-to-face with the plain of Anne’s stomach that shows under her camisole, pale and freckled, and Diana can’t help but smile.

“What book was it that you bought when you ran into Gilbert?” Diana asks.

Anne lights up. “Oh! I just have to show you it.” She replies with excitement brimming in her voice and shuffles toward her bag to grab it. “Turn on the furnace, will you? I’m starting to freeze over.”

The rickety old thing barely works, especially in the winter, but whatever heat it does give off is better than nothing. Anne and Diana cram into their bed, tucking themselves under the thick, wool blankets they have, and Anne starts to read aloud the words from the page. Diana rests her head on Anne’s shoulder and feels Anne’s socked feet slot into place between her calves, hoping to warm them up.

Anne starts to read out, It is a beauteous evening, calm and free…  and soon enough Diana finds herself drifting off to the gentle sound of the poems, grateful for Anne's warmth and the magical intonation of her voice that has not changed one bit since that first day at the schoolhouse.

One moment ticks to the next, and then all of a sudden it’s the last day of the year. Anne and Diana celebrate the start of the 1900s with the taste of champagne stuck on their tongues, in a room full of people they barely know, and the shining lights of the Eiffel Tower outside.

There’s a bar down the street from their flat that they like to go to when they want to feel older than they are. Often it’s packed so tightly to the brim that people spill out onto the streets, drinking and smoking and laughing. Diana and Anne like to keep close to each other, looking around the room with wide, girlish eyes and whispering to each other about the people they see, who drinks what, who kisses who. 

Tonight, it feels like the beating heart of Paris. Girls in nice dresses laugh into each other’s shoulders and boys play pool in the corner. Anne’s French has gotten much better over time, but she still stumbles over the words when she orders drinks for the two of them at the bar, and it makes Diana snicker from behind her.

They stand in the corner of the room, pressed together hip-to-hip, Anne’s arm intertwined with hers, Anne’s hair bright and coppery even under the dim lights, her eyes dancing all around the room, following the story lines of the people nearby them intently. Diana smiles up at her adoringly, and then suddenly becomes embarrassed of it, aware how she must look from the outside, but Anne barely notices, too caught up in the moment of the night.

Everyone in the bar goes silent in a collective hush when someone stands on a table and announces how close it is to midnight. Whispers travel across the room like ripples and Diana leans up to speak into Anne’s ear, “Can you believe it? 1900!”

Anne looks down at her with a grin, wild and excited. “I truly cannot, my darling Diana!” She says, and they giggle stupidly into their drinks, seventeen and already halfway to being drunk.

All of a sudden, there’s an incessant popping from outside and that’s when they know that someone has let off fireworks into the night sky, that the calendar has turned over and suddenly they are living in a completely different time. It sounds like pure magic, nothing Diana or Anne have ever heard before, and although they can only see slivers of the bursts of light in the sky, they watch the waves of different colors burst onto the groups of people and the cobblestone streets outside; red, yellow, green, blue, orange, white.

Diana jumps up and down in excitement along with many of the bar patrons, and Anne lets out a loud laugh, her cheeks red like apples. One at a time, several of the people around them turn to whoever they came here with and hold the person’s face in their hands before dipping down for a kiss. Diana’s eyes sweep the scene, watching rich girls with bright red lips stain the mouths of the boys they love, couples smiling into each other’s mouths, laughing, and a few boys in the corner pecking one another on the lips fast and quick in between playful swats at each other.

Diana smiles wide, feeling like she’s seconds away from lifting off of the ground from the magic of the night. She looks up at Anne with her teeth between her tongue, ready to celebrate or cheers the old year away, but the expression on Anne’s face surprises her. The grin that had been dimpling Anne’s cheeks was gone and was now replaced with lips that were pressed together in thought and eyes scouring the plane of Diana’s face so intently that it almost made her want to back away and shrink under them. It takes a second for Diana to really recognize the expression, one she’s seen so little on Anne’s face throughout the years: nervousness. 

When Anne ducks down and kisses Diana in that dark corner of the bar, cigar smoke hazing the room around them and providing a veil between them and everyone else in this world, it feels large and overwhelming.

Diana wonders how such a small action can seem mythical, how the sweet and simple press of Anne’s lips to hers practically has her heart bursting through her chest, how, all at once, it changes her perspective on the entire world.

Anne kisses her all the way home, pulls her into dark alleys and under arches of doorways, and Diana just laughs and says, “Anne, we live only a block away – can you just –” and then Anne will duck down and kiss her again and Diana will burst into giggles at the act of it, causing Anne to follow suit. Nobody’s looking at them; everyone is caught up in watching the endless fireworks supply the people of Paris seem to have, drinking all of their friends under the table in the open bars that litter the streets, or kissing their lovers as well. Diana wonders if this is what Aunt Josephine and Aunt Gertrude felt like in Paris, if they were this happy too, this in love, this ecstatic, this hopeful.

Anne and Diana don’t even have to talk about it, what it all really means. They know. They both know. They’ve always known, somewhere, deep in their hearts. It’s just that these things could never have happened in Avonlea. The people they are now seem so far away from the people they would have been, like maybe God saved them, cut the two of them out of the green rolling hills like paper dolls and stuck them under the Eiffel Tower as a mercy, as if saying, You will be safe here, you will flourish here, you will fall in love here.

In the beginning of the year, Aunt Jo brings Cole to visit. There’s an important art gala she’s meant to attend in France, but she sends a letter to Anne and Diana saying that she might as well make a trip of it. 

She certainly lives up to her word. Going around Paris with Aunt Jo makes Anne and Diana feel like they don’t know Paris at all, despite the fact that they’ve lived here for half a year now. Aunt Jo shows the girls all of the city’s secrets, like she’s the only woman who really knows them, and she takes them to parties even grander than the soirees she has back at home.

Cole, at this point in his life, seems so fondly used to Josephine’s eccentricities that he just rolls his eyes whenever they walk into another party where people are costumed in masks so beautiful they might as well be hanging in a museum exhibition, people with hair so large it hits the ceiling of every room, people wearing dresses with hoop skirts from their parents’ generation that are so extravagant one is unable to walk through a doorway that’s not at least three people wide.

It’s at the entrance of one of these parties that Anne grabs Diana’s hand as they walk up to the door, and although no one says anything right then, Diana catches Aunt Jo’s warm expression and later, in the crowded bustle of the night, Cole corners Diana and says, “I see that you and Anne finally came to your senses.”

Diana can’t help but blush, caught off guard by the subject. “Well –” she starts, and then promptly cuts herself off. Instead of talking, she takes a large sip of the drink in her hand and it makes Cole laugh.

“It’s good. It’s really good to see,” he assures her, a flush on his cheeks from dancing and drinking. “Some people live their whole lives without finding someone who loves them like you two love each other.”

Anne has always known Cole better than Diana – Anne seems to know the whole word and all of its crevices better than Diana ever will – but Diana knows what yearning and desperate longing sound like, especially when it is trying to be hidden by the person feeling it. She’d spent every day in the schoolhouse of Avonlea watching Anne watch Gilbert, and if any of the girls ever asked her about it, she’d lie through her teeth. All she’d ever wanted was for someone to see past her words and love her for it all, anyway, tell her that everything would be okay someday.

So she turns to Cole and places a hand on his arm and squeezes. “You’ll find somebody too, you know.”

He smiles at her, but it’s so melancholic that it almost breaks her heart. “I think what you and Anne have is a rare thing,” he says, taking a sip of his own drink and smiling mirthlessly. “I would be lucky to find somebody who even wants to look me in the eyes before they kiss me.”

“Well, they do call Paris la ville d'amour,” she tells him, smiling kindly, “The city of love. You and Aunt Jo don’t leave for another two weeks.”

Cole snorts into his drink. “That’s an awful lot of time to find a boy, fall in love, and then have to leave him to go back to Canada.”

Diana just shakes her head. “It’s an awful lot of time to have an adventure.”

He smiles at this, and then watches her for a moment. The live band finishes whatever song they’re playing and rearranges themselves to start a new one. As they sing the opening lines, Cole leans closer to her and, with a teasing grin on his face, says, “You’re starting to sound a lot like Anne.”

Diana just laughs, her chest warm from the alcohol. “I think we can both agree that if we all were just a little bit more like Anne, we’d live life so much fuller.”

Both of them look toward where Anne is playing a game of Billiards in the corner, like they both need the reassuring comfort of her presence, to know that she’s there. Anne is bent over the pool table, a cue in her hand, and she’s got her tongue sticking out of her mouth in concentration as she lines up the ball, shoots, and hits the red striped three right into a pocket. The crowd around her erupts in cheers, and she smiles smugly as she heads to the other side of the pool table, ready to sink another ball.

Diana and Cole look back at each other, stupidly fond smiles on their faces for Anne.

Diana intertwines her arm with his. “I’m afraid we don’t have many friends in the city yet, or else I would try to find someone to set you up with,” she tells him, and then surprises a burst of laughter out of herself with her next thought, “Although, Gilbert Blythe does live around the corner from us.”

Cole shoots her the most surprised look. “Is he –”

“No, no, I don’t think so,” Diana says, “But he is a rather nice boy. You two would be good friends.”

Cole sighs as though he has the weight of the world on his shoulders. “He’s too cute. I can’t be friends with another cute boy that I will accidentally fall hopelessly in love with or I might just perish on the spot,” he says, and Diana laughs so hard she snorts up part of her drink.

Anne refuses to stop babbling later that night as the two of them lay in bed. Sometimes alcohol will do this to her: ignite her energy until she’s talking twice the speed as an average person, and Diana will just have to sit there and listen like she gets any of it.

Anne is currently going on about some plan Diana can’t quite follow, something about buying a big house in the French countryside like the one they went to the other weekend for a party hosted by another friend of Aunt Jo. Anne gestures wildly into the air and continues on, “And we will get married – I’ll pretend to be a boy, don’t worry – and we will adopt all the children from the nearby asylums, all the little French children with their red cheeks and wispy blonde hair, and we will have a dozen sons and daughters, and they will help us start a farm on the property with pigs and cows and sheep… enough animals and crops until we have a little French Green Gables.” Anne pauses for a second and purses her lips in thought. “A… une maison verte.”

“La maison aux pignons verts.” Diana translates for her, and then laughs as she moves her hand to brush a stray lock of hair out of Anne’s eyes. “You are drunk, Anne Shirley.”

“I am in love, sweet Diana.” Anne says dramatically, and she reaches a hand out to cup one of Diana’s cheeks.

Anne leans over and Diana meets her halfway with a kiss. Then she moves on and kisses Diana on both cheeks, then her forehead, then the button of her nose, and then finally she kisses Diana’s eyelids softly as they flutter close from laughter.

This affection is enough to quiet Anne for a moment, and Diana settles back under the covers, ready to slip her eyes close when Anne goes, “Maybe we can go back home when we’re older,” she murmurs, “Maybe we can live in Green Gables.”

Diana’s eyes blink open in surprise. “Back home to Avonlea?” She asks, anxiety apparent in her voice. She thought that’s why they had come here – to escape forever, to never look back.

Anne frowns at Diana’s fright. She takes Diana’s hand in her own and holds it to her chest, where Diana can feel the steady thump, thump of her heart warmly through her skin. “Not now, I mean. Not any time soon – and it would only be a maybe.”

Diana swallows. “Maybe,” she echos, wholly unsure, and then she remarks, “I thought you liked it here.”

“I do! Of course I do.” Anne tells her, playing with Diana’s hand, touching their fingertips together, and then turning up Diana’s palm so she can run her fingers along the lines, “But I miss the Lake of Shining Waters. I miss my Snow Queen. I miss the toffee that the general store sells in winter. I miss eating dinner at Bash and Gilbert’s house, and I miss Delly. I miss the girls.” She pauses for a moment with her attention focused on Diana’s palm, and then when she looks up at Diana, there’s something a little broken on her face. “I miss Matthew and Marilla with my whole tender heart.” She smiles, watery and wobbly, and then a tear slips out from her eye, sinking fast toward the pillow case.

“Oh, Anne,” Diana whispers gently, leaning over to wipe the tears away as they come, “Of course we can go back.”

“It doesn’t have to be forever,” Anne says, sniffing through the snot that’s suddenly formed in her nose, “It could even just be for a visit.”

Diana is silent for a moment as she lays her head against Anne’s chest, her hand still on Anne’s cheek and thumb at the precipice of her eyes, ready to swipe anymore tears that spring up. Diana cannot imagine how weird it might feel to be back in Avonlea after changing so much in such a short amount of time. She wonders if her parents would want to see her if they knew she was home, what their home looks like now that Diana is absent from it. Minnie May must be growing so fast, Diana worries suddenly that the next time that she’ll see her sister is when she is already a grown up girl with interests and dreams Diana has no clue of.

“We should do it,” Diana says decidedly, much like that day she’d agreed to run away with Anne to here. “And maybe – maybe we could go back to Avonlea someday and stay there. Green Gables will belong to you eventually, won’t it?”

Anne nods. “I’d imagine so.” Her tears have mostly stopped, but she still seems a little sad.

Diana smiles down at her, trying to rouse some happiness to her face. “Perhaps we’ll have to settle for adopting children from asylums in Nova Scotia then instead.”

Anne laughs through her melancholy and the way her face scrunches up makes her freckles look like a wide constellation of happiness. “I wouldn’t do that if I were you. I hear they’re rotten work.”

Cole draws a portrait of them in the park a few days before he and Aunt Jo depart. 

It seems that despite the injury he suffered at the hands of Billy Andrews all that time ago, he’s been slowly working his way up to feeling comfortable with drawing again, and the picture he produces of them is just as beautiful as any of his sketches Diana glimpsed while they were in school.

It’s in charcoal, of course; Anne and Diana are drawn in black, smokey lines as they sit hip-to-hip, arm-in-arm. Anne is laughing in the portrait, all her freckles dotted in, and Diana is looking at her with a twist of the lips, her little dimple poking out of her cheek. Somehow, it captures them perfectly. Beyond the attention to detail and the pin-point accuracy of their features, something about the way they exist on the paper allows Diana proof of her and Anne in a way that almost takes her breath away.

The sight of drawing makes Anne immediately tear up. Aunt Jo laughs fondly at her and her dramatics, her Anne- ness that never goes away or diminishes, even after years and years. They get the piece properly framed and put it up right next to their door so that it’s the first thing they see when they walk in and the last thing they see before they go. 

It’s a reminder of so many beautiful things, but most of all, it is a comfort to come home to.

In the new year, Anne goes back to school. Gilbert helps secure her a place at the Sorbonne where she still studies to become a teacher, except now with a small concentration in language. Diana helps her often with her French translations, assignments that frustrate her to no end but certainly do not snuff the flame of passion for education in Anne Shirley-Cuthbert.

Diana doesn’t go back to school, much to the surprise of everyone, including herself. The reality is that neither of them feel comfortable living off of Aunt Josephine’s kindness forever and this means that one of them must get a job. One of the biggest differences between Anne and Diana has always been that Anne has real, tangible goals. Anne can spell out what she wants her future to look like with a few concise pages. Diana has never known what she wants to be, she has always just known what she didn’t want to be and that was whatever her parents were making her into. 

She finds a job as an out-of-house governess working for a lady in a large villa just outside of the city, tutoring her three children in piano, arithmetic, and writing. She has to take the train there for an hour every morning and back again at night, but she finds she doesn’t mind how out of the way it seems to be, that going into the green countryside satiates the part of her heart that still longs a little for Avonlea.

However, it is a rather fine shock to Diana, who had grown up with governesses her entire life, tutors and maids, to suddenly be on the other side of things. The woman she works for is dreadful and reminds her of a mixture of her own mother and Rachel Lynde if neither of them had ever been taught kindness. She’s stuck up and patronizing, orders Diana around like she’s a dog, and expects so much of her on some days that Diana feels like she’s going to burst.

It’s hard work, but the children are the reason she stays. Two girls and a boy, and although they can often be fussy and find Diana’s lessons boring, they attach to her easily. The boy is the oldest, and he is the one Diana teaches piano to. Some days, before she takes the train back into the city, he’ll wrap his arms around her waist and beg her not to go.

“I’ll be back tomorrow,” she reminds him with a light laugh, petting the top of his head, “Like I always am.”

He looks up at her with watery eyes, but he nods and steps away, a pout evident on his face, and it makes Diana’s heart hurt. She wants to kneel down and tell him, Someday you will get out of this place and find people who love you without holding you in boxes. Someday, when you’re older, I’ll tell you everything about how to escape. But she doesn’t, of course. She just keeps coming back, happy every day to see the wide grin he gives her when he opens the door for her arrival.

Anne invites Diana to attend a school soiree with her and Gilbert, something Diana happily agrees to.

With her work schedule, she seldom has free time. This little amount of time off means that Diana is woefully separate from Anne’s school life – when Anne is at school, Diana is at work – and although she knows about Anne’s daily going-ons, she never gets to really be apart of it. Anne comes home and tell her tales from school, things Gilbert said to her in passing when they caught lunch or how much her professor ended up liking her paper, but they almost seem like tales from another world to Diana, a little like the stories Anne used to make up for the Story Club.

So Diana jumps at the opportunity of the event, makes sure she has the night off, and picks out her nicest dress, one of the ones she brought from Avonlea that she’s so close to growing out of.

Diana sits at the old and worn vanity she’d found in a couple months ago and makes sure each curl of her hair is in the right place, tied with the right bow, as Gilbert sits on the edge of her and Anne’s bed, both of them waiting for Anne to be done changing behind the partition they have set up in their small little flat.

“Don’t expect much for tonight,” Gilbert tells Diana tentatively as he rubs their cat's belly. Beau Cat has found his way inside and is keeping Gilbert company by sitting next to him on the edge of the bed and asking for pets. “The food is good, but the whole thing is a little…”

“Pretentious?” Diana supplies for him with an amused smile, acutely away of Gilbert’s humble nature. He’s never been one for formalities or excessive fancy.

Gilbert huffs a laugh, scratching behind the cat’s ears. “Couldn’t have said it better myself.”

“Don’t listen to him,” Anne says loudly from behind the partition. Diana can see her shadow tying and securing the various parts of her outfit on her person. “The experience is magnificent! Everyone gets in their best dress and –”

Gilbert shoots Diana a look. “Anne just likes it because she gets to corner her professors and talk to them for an unwarranted amount of hours –”

“About things they love! About their professions!”

The two of them laugh at the way Anne huffs, Diana rolling her eyes, and that’s when Anne finally steps out, fully dressed in a lovely pearl white dress with all the ruffles and lace a girl could want, something she had managed to buy with the money Aunt Jo had given her for her birthday.

Diana is not quite sure how much Gilbert knows of their arrangement, but the question is solved when Anne first sees her sitting in the vanity chair. Although Diana holds her tongue back from gushing about how ethereal Anne looks, Anne holds none of these reservations and gasps, “You look beautiful!” with her wide eyes looking at Diana. She doesn’t hesitate to walk forward and cup Diana’s cheek so she can lay a kiss to her lips.

Diana breathes in sharply as they part and immediately her eyes flick to Gilbert, but he barely blinks at the act of intimacy. Diana still blushes, though, and has trouble looking Gilbert in the eyes for the next half hour as they make their way to the Sorbonne, Anne talking animatedly about her excitement for the night and Diana walking behind her silently, focusing on making sure her skirt isn't dragging on the ground. It only stops when Gilbert nudges her in the shoulder while Anne is busy talking to a man at the entrance of the event and asks her, “Are you alright?” in that kind way he always has about him.

Diana lets out the breath she had trapped in her chest. “Yes,” she says, trying for a smile.

“You will have fun tonight. I mean – it is pretentious – but Anne likes it, and sometimes her excitement is enough to change the mood of the whole room, it feels like.” He smiles down at her and then offers out his arm to her. “Don’t be nervous. The three of us will have a good time.”

His words do make her feel better about the entire thing, and so she intertwines her arm with his. When Anne comes back to them, she takes Gilbert’s other side, and that’s how they spend a good chunk of their night: all three of them linked to the other.

Despite Gilbert’s thoughts, the soiree is a bit magical at first. The food is grand, the people are drunk and laughing, and they have someone actually well-trained playing Debussy on the piano. Diana spends most of her time following Anne and Gilbert around easily and being introduced to the people they spend their days with, and then she listens to them have conversations about things she doesn’t really understand, happy to stand and eat the hors d'oeuvres that come around on platters and watch how Anne’s face transforms in excitement as they move from conversation to conversation that she enjoys.

Problems do start to arise, though, when a fair number of people assume that Diana is here with Gilbert, and not Gilbert and Anne. People take one look at her and turn to ask Gilbert, Est-ce ta charmante dame? A various amount of people refer to Diana as Gilbert’s beau or sometimes even ta femme, something that almost makes Anne spit her drink out every time. Is this your wife ? 

These are all sentences that Gilbert laughs at. He pats Diana platonically on the arm and says, No no, she is just a friend, a statement that none of their peers really seem to believe, anyway.

Anne excuses herself to the restroom during the start of a conversation, and Diana watches her go, her silhouette of white eaten up by the crowd. Halfway through the discussion Gilbert is having with one of his classmates, Diana realizes that Anne’s absence has gone on for quite a while. She leans up to whisper into his ear, “I’m going to –”

But before she even finishes her thought, Gilbert shoots her a smile and nods. “Go.”

It is never that hard to find Anne, even in a large group of people, due to the pure nature of her hair, and so it takes Diana less than five minutes to spot Anne sulking in a chair pushed against the wall of the room, right next to the door one goes through to find the restroom. She has a drink in her hand and she sits slouched low with a frown stuck on her face, a sight that would make Marilla and Rachel Lynde practically gag at it’s impropriety.

“Oh, hello Mrs. Blythe,” Anne sniffs as Diana gets close enough to hear her, “How has the night been treating you?”

Diana shakes her head and steps close to Anne. She lovingly brushes away a piece of Anne’s hair that has fallen out of its elaborate updo for the night. “Anne,” she says in a warning voice, some part of her brain thinking about how much closer Anne could have been, once, to being Mrs. Blythe than her, “That’s not a funny joke.”

“Everyone else seems to think it is.”

Diana sighs. “Oh, stop pouting, would you?” When Anne just sits there and sulks, Diana leans down and kisses her on the apple of her cheek quickly, the best she can do in a place like this. “Let’s go dance and stuff our faces with the little cakes they’re serving. Or would you rather sit here and mope the whole night?”

Anne looks up at her with eyes that are a little brighter than before, Diana’s affection having reinvigorated her. “Alright.” She says softly, and she takes the hand Diana holds out for her and doesn’t let it go.

Gilbert joins them by the piano a little bit later, obviously exhausted by all the conversations he’s been forced to have during the night, all the performance he’s had to uphold. Anne sees him, lets out a laugh at the expression on his face, and promptly gives over the rest of her drink. “You need it more than I do, Gil.” 

He accepts the glass gladly with a cheers their way, and then stands by and watches them swirl and twirl ridiculously to the rhythm of the piano, practically the only people in the room dancing. The rest of the party goers seem hellbent on networking and drinking, too scared to seem ridiculous.

The moment strikes a funny memory in Diana of that day they’d learn to dance in the schoolhouse for the county fair, how she’d glanced over at Anne to laugh with her at the way Moody had just clumsily stepped all over Diana’s feet, only to find that Anne was wholly consumed with Gilbert, barely looking away from his face even as they switched partners.

Selfishly, Diana feels a flood of joy at the way their roles have reversed to be in this moment; that it’s Gilbert watching them from afar now, smiling at the way she and Anne dance in their own world and laugh at each other when they get the steps wrong, not particularly concerned if anyone else in the room is watching.

The two little girls of the family Diana works for get into a nasty fight one day during one of their reading lessons. There were always too many years between Diana and Minnie May for any of their arguments to turn nasty, but these sisters are far closer in age and far different. Even though Diana does her best to calm them down, one of the children still ends up breaking a vase in the parlor and the sounds of both of the girls' wailing, as well as their repeated angry statements at Diana - I hate you! I want a new tutor! I hate you! - makes their mother come downstairs to figure out what's happening.

Diana gets a hard slap on the wrist and a warning. "If anything like this happens again, I won't hesitate to fire you," is what the mother tells her that night before she leaves to catch the train home. Diana, exhausted and on the brink of a breakdown, sits there and listens silently as the mother says, "You are on very thin ice, Miss Barry."

When Diana gets home, Anne already has dinner cooking on the stove. It’s only soup – it will be years before they make enough to buy meals that contain anything much fancier – but it’s the kind Marilla always used to make on winter weekdays, the kind that fills up your stomach warmly and leaves you full for hours on end.

Diana walks through the door, fully prepared to finally break and start crying from the stress of the day, and then Anne’s face lights up. “It is my favorite lass!” She declares, as if Diana doesn’t come home to her every night, and then she walks to meet Diana at the doorway. She captures Diana’s face in her hands, kisses both of Diana’s cheeks, and then finally her lips. “My darling one, my lady Dawn – sweet mother, I cannot cook – slender Aphrodite has overcome me with longing for a girl!” Anne exclaims with a flare, draping herself across Diana’s collarbone and shoulders.

Diana rolls her eyes and wraps her arms around Anne, supporting her weight. The tears she was seconds away from spilling dry up immediately, as though Anne's presence removes all the burden from her shoulders. She kisses Anne on the crown of her forehead, into a sea of strawberry blonde hair that Anne has pulled back into a small ponytail to keep out of her face while cooking. “Your darling one begs both you and Aphrodite that you find it in yourself to continue cooking because she is so hungry she might just fall to pieces.”

Anne steadies herself back on her own two feet. “I suppose I can summon the will,” she tells Diana, a lovey-dovey smile growing on her face as she steps back into the kitchen. “Oh, I got bread! I ran past the bakery on my way back from class, and they were selling for only two euros!” Anne exclaims, holding up the baguette in excitement. “We can have soup and toast tonight.”

“Ooh la la,” Diana remarks as she puts all of her bags down and then slides into one of the rickety stools they have in the kitchen. “Tres fantaisie. ”

“Oui, oui, mademoiselle. ” Anne starts cutting up half the baguette to toast, all these little slices of bread peppering the small amount of counter space they have. She looks up at Diana, a fond light in her eyes that she always has when she looks at Diana, even though they have spent years and years and years looking at each other. “How was your day?”

Diana sits with her chin in her hands and tells Anne all about it as she watches Anne putter around the kitchen, doing this and that, sprinkling something into the pot, buttering the toast. It’s a trousers day for Anne and she has a white button up tucked into them, a shirt that’s a little bit too large and billowy for her, one that Diana thinks looks suspiciously like one of Gilbert’s old shirts he might have lent to her. Diana watches her fondly and feels warm bursts in her chest as Anne asks about the kids and how they’re doing, as she curses out the mother Diana works for not bothering to be empathetic, and Diana wonders how she ever ended up with such a wonderful girl.

They eat soup on the balcony and feed each other pieces of toast. Diana sits with her legs on Anne’s lap and Anne tears up pieces of her bread for Beau Cat, who sits on the railing near them and watches them eat. Summer’s almost here and Diana is sad to let spring go, but she knows that this summer will be good to them. Ruby and Tillie had expressed interest in coming to visit in a letter last week and Aunt Jo was thinking about renting a villa out in the country for a month or two. What is summer for if not to live extravagantly? I am getting too old to pretend that I want to live any way else, is what she had written in her letter, and Diana had let out such a bright laugh upon reading it. She’d said that Cole had found a nice young man to spend his time with – a musician who played the violin – and that he might join them on their journey to France, as well. Anne had also talked to Matthew and Marilla about maybe spending the short few weeks of Anne’s summer break at Green Gables if they can afford the trip over, and Matthew and Marilla had offered to pay for half of it.

The last of the spring wind runs through the city, tousling Diana’s hair, and they sit on their balcony long after they finish their food to watch the sun go down fully, the inky night sky lighting up the gas lamps below them on the cobblestone streets of Paris.

Anne idly wraps her hand around Diana’s ankle that’s still elevated on her lap, encircling the bone there with her thumb and forefinger. “Did you know Marilla said that Matthew finally won his category in the county fair?” Anne asks with excitement, and Diana gasps in joy. “Yes! And with a rutabaga, no less.”

“Rutabaga? ” Diana laughs out. “I didn’t even know you grew rutabagas at Green Gables.”

“Neither did I.” Anne says, and they both dissolve into laughter.

Next month is Diana’s birthday. She’ll be eighteen and they will have been in Paris for a year, one week, and five days. She doesn’t know this at the moment, but Anne is already planning on using the good skills Marilla taught her to bake a birthday cake in their little kitchen. The cake will turn out disastrous and Diana will come home from work to an apartment that is practically repainted white from all the flour stuck to the walls, and Anne will be standing in the middle of it all, about to cry and ready to launch into her spiel of how everything has gone awfully wrong and she’s so sorry but she tried, and Diana will laugh so hard at seeing Anne, halfway to tears with egg yolk stuck in her hair, that she chokes on air. 

They’ll go to the nearby bakery instead and get two slices of cake and a box of macaroons, and they’ll go to the bar down the street and drink a little too much champagne. Anne will best all the men at Billiards like she always does and Diana will laugh from afar and listen to the music, and they will spend the entire night giving each other long, lingering gazes, as if they were recreating their childhood, but with the knowledge now that they will go home together and sleep in the same bed, wake up and have breakfast with their cold feet entangled under the same table.

When they stumble home hours later, Diana complaining about how she has work the next morning and will surely die if she doesn’t fall into bed in the next few seconds, Anne will roll her eyes and laugh at her, exclaiming how she’s supposed to be the one with all the dramatics, and then before Diana can protest, Anne will drag her to the shadowy side of the street and kiss her, holding Diana’s face in her hands like it is the last time she’ll ever get to. Diana will sink into it, and she’ll wrap her arms around Anne’s waist, and she won’t think about the fear if anyone sees them, she won’t think of anything at all except how crazy the world is, how lucky a girl she is, how much she loves Anne Shirley-Cuthbert.

But these things are far off to Diana now, who is currently picking up her fussy cat from the balcony railing and smothering him with kisses. Eighteen is a wild number, and it’s funny how she’ll be in Paris for eighteen, but under completely different circumstances than she always thought she would be.

Anne’s thumb taps on Diana’s ankle bone along with to the beat of music that’s seemingly inside her head, and she hums along to it.

“What are you singing?” Diana asks, looking over top of their cat's little head to smile at Anne.

Anne continues to sway her head from side to side, humming along to nothing. “A love song.”

“Oh? To who?”

“Not anyone you would know.”

Diana smothers a laugh. “I see how it is.” She gives a fond sigh. “Will you write me one then? A love song?”

Anne giggles nervously. “I’ll write you a poem.” A steady tap, tap, tap to Diana’s ankle bone. “Maybe you can write a piano arrangement for it, and then it’ll be a song.”

Diana can’t control the wide smile that appears on her lips or the amount of love that seems to spill from her chest so overwhelmingly that she thinks about leaning forward roughly and kissing Anne senseless for as long as she can. “Alright,” she agrees, “That sounds like a deal, Miss Shirley-Cuthbert.”

Anne gasps in mock scandal. “Why, I’ll have you know it’s Mrs. Shirley-Cuthbert-Barry, thank you very much.”

Diana feels her heart melt in her chest. “That’s quite the mouthful, wouldn’t you say?”

“It doesn’t bother me,” she shrugs, her eyes achingly soft as she looks across Diana.

“I suppose it’ll have to do then.”

“I suppose so.”

Being in love with Anne is the easiest thing Diana’s ever done, although she supposes that’s because she’s loved Anne since the first day Marilla brought her to Orchard Slope.

Diana could have gone the rest of her lonely life \with a placid smile stuck on her face, unaware of anything better. A mirror image of her could be sitting in Paris at this age already married off to a man who would probably be young and kind-faced, but wholly boring. Her life could have been so many other things, so many, and yet she somehow got this one by accident, because a little redheaded girl came to Avonlea instead of a little redheaded boy.

What a divine accident. What a lucky sack of stars.