What does it mean to have a "happily ever after"? Do they really exist…? I wish I was a princess. I too wish to have what they call a "happily ever after" just like those Disney princesses in those movies. No matter what happened, everything always worked out in the end for them. But in reality, not everything works out. Eventually everything will end… even… love.

I was a freshmen in high school. It was a new school, new environment, new everything. It was fun, but… to be honest, I kind of missed my old middle school, especially since the academics were so much easier there. But what I missed the most was… the old Natsu Dragneel.

Back in middle school, Natsu used to follow me everywhere. No matter where I was, he was always there, and no matter where he was, I was always there. We were inseparable… and best of friends. Every year on my birthday, he would give me presents, on Christmas too. And whenever he went on vacations, he always remembered to give me a souvenir. And he texted me everyday. There wasn't one day where we never texted each other.

Now that I think about it, when I first met Natsu in sixth grade, I hated him so much. To me, he was the most annoying jerk I ever met. We sat next to each other in math class. We were always arguing during that class. I don't remember how all that hate turned into the best of friends, but… I'm glad it did.

One time, on my birthday, I had totally forgotten about it, due to stress and many things that were going on at the time. I was at my locker like any usual day and took out my supplies for my next class when suddenly, I saw an arm hover over my hand and place something in my locker, a little keychain of one of my favorite character in this television show, Happy. "Happy birthday..." the person said silently.

I turned around to see that the person was Natsu. "Huh?" I said. "It's my birthday?"

"Yeah, I think so," Natsu said. "Unless I got the day wrong..." He took out his phone and showed it to me. "June first, right?"

Slowly, I nodded with wide eyes. "T-Thanks... Natsu..." I said. "But, how did you know? I never told you..."

"It's not a big deal..." Natsu replied as he scratched his head. "Um... anyway... happy birthday... I guess."

I guess one of the best memories I had with him would be the field trip my middle school had for the graduating class, my grade. My class went to a festival at a shrine. I was at a booth, trying to win this cute keychain hanging on the shelf. It was so adorable, but no matter how many times I tried, I couldn't win it. I know that this scene seems so cliche but… it was an important moment to me… My friends were all laughing at me because I couldn't win it after almost fifteen tries.

"Psh, Lucy just give up already!" my friend Erza snickered. "This kind of thing is so not your style."

"Shut up, Erza!" I replied. I lifted up the toy gun again, attempting to shoot down the keychain. "I'm going to get this keychain no matter what! You just watch!"

I pressed the trigger and again I missed. I sighed. Maybe my friends were right. Games like this weren't really my thing anyway.

After a few more tries, I left the booth and decided to go get food at the festival instead. It was a ton of fun. Tasting the sweet caramel apples, getting our fortunes checked, the joyful expressions my friends had on their faces, it was marvelous.

When it was time to go, I walked to the school bus to spot Natsu, waiting at the front of the bus. "Hey Natsu!" I said with a bright smile. "Aren't you going to get in the bus?"

"Um.. yeah," he replied. Suddenly, he shoved his right hand into my hands, placing something small and soft there. "Here, I won this, but I don't really want it, so you can have it." Then, quickly, he ran into the school bus, his hair covering the expression on his face.

I looked at the what he put in my hands, laughed, and smiled. It was that keychain from that booth! I wondered how did he knew that I was trying to win this or was it just a simple coincidence. I wasn't sure but I was happy either way. It was kinda odd though. Knowing Natsu, he really sucked at games like those. "Thank you…" I whispered as I hugged the little keychain.

When the bus got to the school, one of Natsu's friends, Rogue Cheney, came to my seat and whispered something in my ear. "Hey," he whispered. "Don't tell Natsu I told you this but, actually he was watching you the whole time when you were at the booth. And once you left, he tried over twenty times, trying to win you that doll." Then he smiled at me, winked, and put his finger to his lips. "Sh… don't tell him!"

That was the first time I felt that I fell in love with Natsu. My heart was pumping crazily and my face was the darkest red it had ever been in years. I don't know… Love happens when one least expects it I guess. It's like, one day you don't love them, and the next, you kind of just wake up, saying, "Oh god. I think I'm in love with him."

After graduation, I was walking around in my gown, talking to some people, maybe for the last time. It was sad, yet it was also exciting. I guess the word to describe it is "bitter-sweet". However, it didn't really feel like graduation. It felt like I was going to be back at school the next day like normal. No one really cried during the graduation.

As I walked around, I felt a tug on my gown. I turned around to see Natsu. "Hey!" I exclaimed. Natsu got accepted into the same high school as me. It was called Fairy High, the most elite high school in our area. Only the smartest people could get in. The school was also the biggest in area in the city.

"Um… Lucy…" Natsu said. He bit his lip and looked into my chocolate brown eyes with his jet black ones. "I… um… Promise me that… even if we get separated in high school… promise me… you'll always stay my friend…"

I laughed and gave him a tight hug. "Are you stupid? Of course I'll always be your friend… You are one of the most important people to me after all..."

"Yeah…" he replied as he hugged me back. "Thanks…"

After that, we hung out a lot in the summer. I saw him at least once a week. I used to hate summer vacation unlike many students my age. It was because to me, it was boring. I didn't hang out with my friends much during vacation, mostly because my parents were a bit overprotective of me and didn't let me go anywhere.

But now, I didn't want summer to end. I loved the summer. I hung out with friends almost everyday of the week now that I was old enough to my parents to hang out. It was so much fun. Then… at the end of summer, a week before the first day of high school, Natsu… made a sudden confession to me.

I was just texting him like normal and he was talking about how this girl he liked would never notice how much he liked her, no matter how much he tried.

Natsu: Like, there's this girl with straight blond hair who won't understand how much I like her. She's totally dense. I liked her since seventh grade too.

Me: That sucks. Lol, I have straight blond hair too. I'll help you! After all, we are best friends, right?

Natsu: She always friendzones me without even knowing she did. Like, she just did it again.

When he first told me about this crush, I was just so… upset. I wanted to cry. It just made me so… broke? I don't know how to describe it. It was as if I got indirectly rejected. After that conversation, I changed the subject, talking about our fandoms and stuff like that. Discussing his crush was just too much for me. Suddenly, he texted me this:

Natsu: You know that you're the only person I know with straight blond hair right?

Me: Really? That's cool.

Natsu: Ugh. Why is this happening to me…

At first I didn't understand that he was directing that message the conversation he was having with me before. It wasn't until he told me about how many clues he leaves her that he likes her, before he told me about… that.

Me: I don't know! Just confess directly to her, if she's that clueless.

Natsu: Erm… now?

Me: Yeah, why not?

Natsu: Oh my god Lucy.

Me: Just do it. You're a cool person… there's no way a girl would ever reject you… After all, you are one of the most popular guys at school…

Natsu: OH MY GOD LUCY. GET THE IDEA ALREADY. I love you.

He told me that about one in the morning. When he typed that, my face went from pale white to crimson red. My heart pounded like crazy and it felt as though my heart was trying to escape out of my chest. I replied that I also loved him back and we decided to be in a mutual relationship; however, it was a secret. Only our closest friends knew about our relationship. For example, Natsu's best friend, Sting Eucliffe, knew about us. Most people didn't however. I don't know, it was an embarrassing thing to announce I guess.

We were just inseparable… until high school happened.

On the first day of high school, I found out I had one class with him, English. However, the teacher had me sitting on one side of the room and him on the other. We couldn't talk to each other at all. It felt as though we weren't even in the same class. However, I still talked to him in the hallway before class started, but that was only for one to three minutes. Other than that, I never got contact with him at school. Like I said before, my new high school, Fairy High, was the biggest high school in area size in the city.

I don't know when it started, but slowly, the conversations we had on text started getting boring. We didn't have that spark anymore. Sometimes, I would get too lazy to reply to his text. And also he stopped replying to my texts right away. Before high school, Natsu would always reply to me right away, within four minutes. But now, it took him at least an hour to four hours to reply to one text and usually, all he said was yeah or oh. That was it. It was as if I wasn't even important to him anymore.

Our texts went something like this:

Me: Oh my gosh! Did you hear their new music video? (7:03 p.m.)

Natsu: Mhm. (10:32 p.m.)

Me: It was great right? (10:34 p.m.)

Natsu: Yeah. (11:53 p.m.)

Me: Did you hear the girl's solo at the end of the video? It was so cool! (11:55 p.m.)

Natsu: Yeah. (1:35 a.m.)

Our conversations just weren't exciting anymore. It was as if he didn't even make an effort to talk to me. Sometimes… when he didn't text me back in so long, it felt like… he was talking to someone else even… better than me… Soon, the words "I love you" seemed so fake whenever he said it. It just… wasn't the same anymore.

Sometimes, when I walked around the hallways to my next class, I would spot Natsu, walking with his friends… that just so happened to always be girls… I'm not even kidding. Ever since he moved to this new high school, he has only made three male friends. The rest were female. In the beginning, I guessed it was because so many girls thought he was good looking, but now… I wasn't even sure anymore…

Whenever I walked past him in the hallways, I would wave hi to him, and he would always wave back, but soon… I noticed that he stopped waving back to me. Whenever I said hi, he would just look at me and turn away, continuing his conversation with his friends… that were of course female. He didn't even acknowledge my presence. He just... ignored me.

Then… it began to feel like to me… Natsu was the world… and to him, I was only an option.

Soon, I noticed that he began to always talk about this certain girl to me. Her name was Lisanna. I'm not saying I hate her or anything… But… she was just so tall and pretty… She was the definition of perfect. She was even taller than Natsu, and he was already pretty tall. But anyway… he was always talking about her, at least once a day to me. I guessed that she was a close friend he made at our new high school.

But soon, I began to hear some rumors around the school. I heard about it from my friend Mirajane, a new friend I had made in Fairy High. "Hey Lucy!" she exclaimed excitedly. "Did you hear? I heard that the Natsu Dragneel has a crush on Lisanna!" Mirajane didn't know about my relationship with Natsu. Like I said before, most people didn't even know that we were in a relationship. Only about ten people really knew.

"O-Oh…" I replied. "T-That's… cool…" I couldn't look at her in the eye. I stared at the wall next to us and shrugged. "I… uh… need to use the restroom… Bye!" Then I ran. I ran to my childhood friend, Sting's house, he lived two blocks away from my high school. He didn't attend the same school, but I heard that he didn't have school today, so I decided to go there.

I knocked on his house's door a couple of times and he opened it to see me. "Woah, Lucy!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing here? Don't you have school? And where's Natsu?" He asked me where Natsu was because usually, whenever I came to his house, Natsu was always with me. But for the first time, I didn't come with anyone. It was just me.

"Uhm…" I looked down at the ground. "C-Can I talk to you?"

"Sure," he replied. He opened the door to his house and pointed inside his house. "Come in."

Sting and I were friends since kindergarten. To me, he was like a brother, someone I could always go to whenever I needed help. He gave the best advice I had ever heard. Sometimes, I wished I could give advice as well as he does.

"What's wrong…?" Sting asked. "You look pale…"

"Um… You know how Natsu and I are in a mutual relationship…?" I said.

"Yeah?" Sting said. "What about it?"

I explained to him the rumors that were going around my school and how Natsu always talked about Lisanna. I also told him about how Natsu always ignored me in the hallway whenever I waved hi to him. "And… I don't want to force him to be in a relationship with me…" I said. "If he likes someone else… I… I'm o-okay with it, I guess…"

"Have you told anyone else about this?" Sting asked.

"Not really… some people from my high school… but you don't know them…" I explained. "They also say that Natsu talks a lot about Lisanna to them too… Some of them are even telling me to break up with him."

"No," Sting said. "I mean, did you tell anyone from our middle school?"

"Not yet… I was thinking about telling Levy but-"

"Don't," Sting interrupted. "Their personal opinions would conflict. I mean, remember how the whole school shipped you guys because you two were literally always together?"

"Oh yeah… I guess you're right…" I said.

Sting put his hand on my shoulder. "Hey… Don't feel bad… People change in high school… even Natsu…"

"Yeah…" I didn't know how to reply. I wanted to cry so bad, but not in front of Sting. It would be too humiliating.

"Don't be afraid to be sad Lucy…" Sting said. "The worst thing is when people pretend to be stronger than they really are…"

When he said that, I couldn't hold my tears anymore. I just began to cry right in front of him. I screamed my lungs out and cried until my eyes couldn't cry any longer. "Thank you… Sting…" I whispered. "Thank you so much…" I wiped my tears with my sleeve and looked at my phone for the time.

"Oh no," I said. "My next class starts in ten minutes… I should get going soon…"

"Yeah," Sting replied. "Good luck at school Lucy!"

"Yeah… except…" I stared at the ground. "I don't want to even go to school anymore… If I go, then I'll have to see Natsu again… I don't want to see him… but I want to see him... I mean… I still love him… I really love him… but… I… I don't know if he feels the same anymore…"

"Lucy…" Sting said. "I'm sorry to say this but… if he doesn't then you have to let him go…"

"I know!" I cried. Tears formed in my eyes again. "I know… I know that I should… But how do I start? I can't just…"

"Lucy, you're an important friend to me, got that?" Sting said. "You don't deserve someone who treats you like you don't exist."

"Yeah…" I grabbed my backpack off the floor and slung it around my back. I wiped my tears with my sleeve and turned to look at Sting. "Thanks Stingy-bee," I said with a smile. Stingy-bee was a nickname I gave him back when we were in fifth grade. It was funny and it just stuck, you know what I mean? Then I went back to school like usual.

And you know what? Sting was right… Not every relationship lasts, even if one really wants it to. People change in high school, sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worst. To be honest, I still love Natsu… I really do… But sometimes, I just have to move on. The process hurts but, eventually I'll get through it, and meet someone new. My friends always told me the famous phrase, "There are plenty of fish in the sea". But I knew that there is only one fish I really wanted: Natsu.

Eventually, I did break up with Natsu. It was hard, but I knew I had to let him go. I knew him for so long, I could tell with one look who he liked and in this case… it wasn't me anymore. It was… Lisanna. Unfortunately, we couldn't go back to the best friends we always were in the past. But, I was happy for him. Eventually, he began to date Lisanna, just as everyone predicted. To be honest, I was still in love with him at that time, but… I was still happy.

Because my happiness is seeing the person I like being happy.

You know, when someone breaks out of a relationship, the two people either really hate each other, or just become okay friends. For Natsu and I, it wasn't any of those. We just became... strangers. We didn't talk to each other anymore, or hung out with each other. We didn't feel hate towards each other, or love. We were strangers, just like in the beginning when I didn't know him. We were strangers, again.

Afterwards, I got into many relationships with other guys in high school. However, none of them made me feel the way Natsu made me feel in the past. Whenever I broke up with the guy, I either became okay friends or extremely hated the other person, not strangers. We at the most, acknowledged each other's presence, unlike Natsu, whom I became strangers with.

However, I believe that every relationship should be remembered, no matter how terrible it was or how great it was. And… that a person should never forget about the person he or she was with at the time.

Eventually, my feelings for Natsu disappeared by the distance we always kept. However, I still thought about him from time to time, not in love thinking, just… thinking about him in general.

Now, I am twenty-three years old. I already graduated from college and am looking forward to my career, after paying most of my student debt. My thoughts about Natsu have lessened, but once and a while, I do think about him, even though it has been almost ten years since we were in a relationship.

"Hey Lucy!" Gray, one of my friends from college, said. "Wanna go to my friend's wedding tonight? He said that I should invite some of my friends to his wedding. You know, the more the merrier?"

I look at my schedule. Well, I didn't really plan anything, but weddings always meant free food. I need to save money for the debt from my college, so eating dinner at the wedding would save some money at least. I know, very ill intentions, but you know, I'm desperate for money.

"Sure," I reply.

"Okay!" Gray replies with a smile. "It's at seven in Magnolia Cafe. See you there!"

"See you there," I say.

That night, I go over to the wedding in my red dress. Now that I think about it, I never asked Gray whose wedding this was. I guess I forgot to ask. Oh well. I'd probably still go anyway. Weddings mean free stuff after all.

I look at my phone as I walk, texting my friend from middle school, Erza. Then, suddenly, I bump into someone whose body is seriously like a rock. Ouch. I look up to see who it is. My eyes widen.

Oh no. This can't be true.

That pink hair.

Those jet black eyes.

That white scarf he always wore.

There's no doubt about it, it's him.

"Lu-Lucy? Is that you?" the man says.

"Natsu…" I reply. I put away my phone. I haven't talked to this guy since we were in ninth grade. Well, this feels awkward. "Um… hey," I say. "It's been a while."

"Erm… yeah," he replies. He scratches his head. "Did Gray invite you?"

"Yeah, he did," I say. Oh no, I always said that I wanted to meet him again and become at least okay friends with him again, but now I just want to run. I look at a huge banner behind him. It says "Natsu and Lisanna" on it.

"O-Oh," I say. "Is this your wedding, Natsu?"

He nods. "Yeah."

Oh… so Lisanna is marrying him. Haha… I knew this would happen in the end. Dammit… why didn't I ask Gray whose wedding this was. I should have never came. I thought I got over him too. What the hell is wrong with me? He was ten years ago… these feelings should be gone.

Slowly, I slip my hand into my pocket and grab my phone. I click my music app and play my ringtone, and pretend to answer my phone. "Yeah?" I say. I feel a little stupid talking to a phone with no one on the other side, but I am desperate at the moment. "Mhm. Kay' got it. I'll come over then. Now? Okay. I'll be there right away."

I click my phone off and look at Natsu. "Oh… Sorry Natsu! I have to go! My friend just called me and she needs me at her house as soon as possible!" I lie. I feel bad for lying but I really need to get out of here... before these tears flow out.

"Oh…" Natsu replies. "That's too bad. See you around maybe?"

"Um… yeah…" I reply. "Bye then." I turn around and face my back towards him. Then, I realize I forgot to say something. Quickly, I turn my head around and smile. "I hope you and Lisanna are happy. Have a nice wedding! Thank you and… goodbye Natsu…"

"W-Wait! Lucy!" he suddenly shouts.

But I just run away before he can answer. He keeps shouting my name over and over again... why? I don't want to hear his answer. I just want to run and hide. Why is he calling me anyway? It's just going to make it harder for me to forget about... him.

Quickly, I get into my car, drive all the way back to the parking lot for my apartment, and just sit in the car. Tears begin to force their way on my eyes again. Why is this happening to me… Why?

I guess... at the end, these feelings were still here... Dammit. Dammit. Why? I thought they were gone. It had already been ten years. How could these feelings still remain here? I thought I was going to be okay now. I guess... I was just tricking myself.

I stare at the sky and close my eyes, allowing the tears to flow down from my eyes, to my cheeks, to dripping down my chin, and then onto the car seat.

"Will I really find someone new...?" I ask myself.

I shouldn't be bothered by you anymore, but I am.

I shouldn't care about you anymore, but I do.

I should hate you, but I don't.

Even after ten years, I still love you… Natsu…

-End of Chapter 1-

Since my fanfic, The Immortal Princess, is about to come to a close, I made a new fanfic! Hope you guys enjoy it! I know this is quite an odd start for a fanfic, but please trust me! It will get better for Lucy. Please review!

If any of you recognize this title, it is the title of one of my old one-shots that I deleted! I got some reviews to continue it and make it into an actual story, so I deleted it and re-made it. I hope you all enjoy it!

If you guys like this, please read my other fanfics as well! Thanks!

~ Metallic Snow