Chapter Text
How could one country fair be both an amazing and very disastrous experience at the same time? Whenever Anne reminisced a happy memory she had of the event, the image of a certain handsome guy walking hand in hand with an unfairly beautiful lady invaded her mind and the happy memory was gone with a loud pop as if it had never existed.
Anne sat on the same spot where she had been at war with herself moments before heading to the fair, wondering whether Gilbert loved her or not. The now-witted flower and its petals lay on the floor of Belle’s stall, reminding her of that day and how silly her pondering seemed now that she was forced to look back on it.
She had always known she wasn’t ideal beauty, and that her temper had never served her or anybody else right, and that her overly passionate mind had never done her any favours, so her thinking that Gilbert might return her feelings when there were women like Winifred out there sounded ridiculous even in her ears. It was clear that Winifred was everything Anne wasn’t and she could offer Gilbert everything Anne couldn’t. And if things didn’t work out between the two of them, there was no doubt in Anne’s mind that he could find another, just equally perfect woman by his side.
Anne wanted to kick those flower petals out of her sight, but she let them be – they would act as a reminder for her to start thinking rationally before diving into her daydreams so deeply it took her days to recover from the disappointment that engendered from them.
She was snapped from her sulking when Jerry’s cheerful whistling pierced through the silence. Its sudden appearance startled Anne slightly, and she glanced over her shoulder and watched him walk into the barn. That boy had been in such high spirits since the country fair, and Anne was annoyed by the fact that his happiness annoyed her.
“What’s gotten you so gleeful today?” she asked rather sharply.
Jerry just shrugged and widened his smile. “Nothing,” he said and took the manure fork that leant against the barn wall.
It was rather obvious to Anne why his head was in the clouds. She simply wanted to know who had succeeded in that, and whether that girl felt the same for Jerry, or if he was doomed to live in the same tragical unrequited love story as Anne had wished upon herself on that exact spot a couple days ago.
Who on earth had she tried to fool when she had convinced herself that unrequited love was by far the most romantic kind? It was the worst of them all, no other kind of love came even close to feeling so terrible as how Anne felt right now.
Jerry disappeared upstairs, still whistling and holding that manure fork, leaving her alone with her sulkiness.
Anne sighed and looked at the beautiful horse next to her. “Oh, Belle, am I ever going to feel normal again? How long does it usually take for a girl to realise that there’s much more to life than some silly boy?”
Belle just kept on chewing on the hay.
“Well, of course he isn’t silly – he’s dreamy. He’s mature, kind, honest and handsome, and his smile leaves me gasping for air. His chin truly is splendid, I couldn’t help paying attention to it at the fair…it’s like the universe knew all my weaknesses and chose to exploit it by sending him from Heaven. Oh, all these new feelings leave me flabbergasted and I don’t know what I am supposed to do with them!”
“Well, for starters you could stop talking to that horse and let the boy know how you feel. It might help,” Jerry’s voice heard from her back.
Anne turned her head to look at him. Jerry had apparently come back down to retrieve something he had forgotten to bring with him the first time around, as he was already walking to the ladder.
“I could never! He already has his intended and they look ever so happy together. They’re the couple you read about in perfect romance novels. They’re both sculpted by the most gifted sculptor. Why can’t my life be like that? I must’ve done something wicked in my previous life to be so unfortunate in this one.”
“This isn’t a book, Anne. This is the real world. Maybe you wouldn’t feel so beaten up by the reality if you didn’t expect it to be like a made-up story,” Jerry said sounding a bit frustrated.
Before Anne had time to say a word to him, Jerry had already disappeared in the hayloft.
Of course it was easy for him to say things like that when everything seemed to be going so perfectly in his own life. How was she expected to not see her life through those books of hers when they were practically the only thing that kept her going before Matthew and Marilla took her in and she could leave her distasteful life behind? Her books used to be her life.
She needed to stop thinking about Gilbert. There was more to her than her stupid and absurd crush on him, and she didn’t want to spend her days mourning over him and feeling sad for herself.
After concluding that Belle wasn’t going to bring her the comfort she had come seeking here and that it was for the best if she busied herself with something else, she jumped off the fence and gave the horse a generous pat on the neck before leaving the barn. On her way out, she heard Jerry call for her and she stopped dead in her tracks to look up.
“Tell Diana I say hi when you go see her today,” he asked, looking down at her from where the ladder ended with a grin. He was holding that manure fork and leaning onto it.
“Since when are you friends with her?” Anne asked suspiciously. “Last time she didn’t seem to have any interest in you when you came up to us.”
He just shrugged, his smile widening. “Isn’t it polite to say hi to someone despite what they think of you?”
She wanted to say something, but the words got stuck in her throat. The realisation that after visiting Diana, she had to visit no other than Gilbert Blythe because of her promise of helping him and Bash with Delphi. This meant that her attempt to stop thinking about that dark-haired beautiful human being would be a total failure before she could even try to succeed in it.
She simply nodded as a response as the words still failed to find her mouth and she exited the barn. It was a good thing Diana knew about her…situation so that she could seek for that comforting support she didn’t receive from Belle before entering Gilbert and Bash’s home.
The depths of despair were within her reach.