Hi guys! I was supposed to get this out yesterday for Valentine's day... but oh well. Anyyyyways I just wanted to thank you all for the cute reviews! Please keep them up because the more of them I see the more I want to write! You guys keep me inspired and I can't wait to see what you have to say :)

-The Demoooon :)

Friend, Please

Seven: Library Books and Nasty Looks

Juvia was 99.9999999% sure she had just made the biggest mistake of her entire life. Why couldn't she have just stayed the quiet, demure, insecure, antisocial girl she had been for so long? That had been working for her. She never had to worry about coming off as stupid or for saying the wrong thing, because, well, she just never said anything. She wondered why she couldn't just stay that girl. The one who didn't say or do anything.

But, nooooo.

The bluenette tried not to repeatedly smash her head against the closest bookshelf. Stupid, stupid, stupid. Stupid for thinking he would even read her letter. Stupid for thinking he would ever want to see her again, let alone meet her. Stupid for thinking he even remembered her. Why would someone like Gray want to be seen with a nobody like her? He was everything people dreamed to be. Popular, extremely handsome, came from a good family, well liked by both his professors and his peers, wickedly athletic, incredibly intelligent. Gray was the whole package and more in every sense of the phrase.

You see, after that night with Gray, she did a little...research. She asked around to see if anyone knew him, knew anything about him. She asked everyone she knew what they knew about him and came up with a short list. By the end of the week, Juvia knew which dorm he lived in, whom he lived with, who he saw on a regular basis, which teachers taught which of his courses.

Juvia even went a few steps further than that. It wasn't enough for her to know the basics about him. She wanted to know everything about him. What his childhood was like, what his real interests were. She wanted to be able to find out things no one else knew about him. But, most of all, Juvia wanted to learn these things from his lips. Since, of course, that was nearly impossible since he barely knew she existed, she settled for some easy internet searches. After punching his name into a search engine, she found a few hits from different websites and social medias. Everything from his high school's' online yearbook to his personal Facebook accounts popped up after a simple search.

The bluenette was aware that what she was doing was wrong and creepy. But her aching need to know more about him quickly took priority over her inhibitions and soon, she stopped caring about all the boundaries she had crossed. With every photo she saw or link she clicked on, she wanted more, more, more. Suddenly, that internet search became a daily occurrence. She carefully scanned through every site that mentioned the name "Gray Fullbuster", taking all the details of his life and family in. She drank in the sight of his face in every picture he had posted on all his various social medias. She even went so far as to look on his friends' feeds to find more images of the dashing raven haired boy.

The more the girl found out, the deeper she fell. She began to get lost in herself, in him, in everything. They seemed so destined to know each other. They had so much in common. They had a deep love for music, they both were part of similar committees, they both shared the same interests. It seemed that everything she had done until that point had been leading up to meeting Gray and now that she had, she needed to get him back into her life.

Although, not everything she found out about him was good. As she dug deeper into his history, the bluenette began to find things she wished she hadn't. As she looked through the man's social medias, she found more and more pictures of him with his arm around gorgeous girls, all millions of times prettier than she. In some of them, he wore nothing but shorts, seemingly at a beach or camp of sorts, while in others, he was dressed formally, wearing form-fitting suits. Her eyes teared as she looked through those pictures, her chest filling with inadequacy. She didn't want Gray but knowing for a fact that she wouldn't have him hurt more than it should have.

The college student tried her hardest not to compare herself to the girls from the photos, but with every different post and every different girl, she began to lose hope. Her self-esteem crumpled as she carefully looked at everyone he knew. They were all better than her, better than her on her best day ever. That girl was thinner and that one had prettier eyes. That one had a bigger chest and the one after that had longer legs. She didn't know a thing about any of them, not even their names, but she still thought every single one of them was better than her. Their faces blended until they became one girl. That one girl was the epitome of everything she wanted to be, everything she couldn't be. That one girl had all of their desirable traits put together, everything she could only dream of being. That one girl was the anti-Juvia; pretty, popular, outgoing and successful. Even when you pulled that one girl apart and looked at all the individual girls, they were still better than her. For all she knew, they were smarter, kinder and funnier than her. They were probably all more outgoing than her. Hell, she didn't even have the courage to wear the type of clothing half of them wore. Just looking at the form fitting clothes gave the girl a small rush.

Everything about Gray's life intrigued her. The more she dug, the more she found out. For example, he had been going to the same summer camp nearly all his life and he had made many friends there. He even went back to work as a counsellor there, along with a lot of people Juvia recognized from around the campus. She envied the look of happiness on their faces in the images. Her parents never wanted her going to summer camp when she grew up. It's too far, they said. We don't want you away from that long, they complained. But, looking at the close bonds Gray had built with his camp buddies, a deep cut of envy filled the bluenette. Not for the first time in her life, she felt she had been robbed of something she should have been able to experience.

Juvia tried not to think about that as she leaned against a bookshelf in the Fiore History Section of the library. Maybe she hadn't been clear enough? She feared he wouldn't be coming at all. It was already five minutes past their arranged time and with every passing second, the girl felt a small part of her heart break a little bit. She wanted to grab her purse, turn on her heel and walk out with what little dignity she had left, but she felt glued in place to her spot. A tiny part of her subconscious was responsible for the fact that she was still standing there, alone in the silent library, instead of walking out like she wanted to. That same part was also whispering to the rest of her mind, keeping the hope that he might show up at the last second alive.

"Shut up," she reprimanded herself aloud. Luckily, no one was within earshot or she would have seemed even crazier than usual (which, for Juvia, was saying something). She shook her head at herself, finally deciding she had had enough with this foolishness. It was obvious by now that she had been stood up, at no fault of Gray's. It had been overly confident and eager of her to believe that he would want to meet up with her again. After all, the last time he probably only took her request out of pity or curiosity. It wasn't every day you found someone pathetic enough to post a note asking for a friend.

Taking her purse and fixing the back of her dark blue skirt, Juvia braced herself for the inevitable "I-told-you-so" that waited for her back at her dorm. Gajeel had been a firm believer that she shouldn't have reached out, especially after he caught sight of Gray's social media uploads. He wanted to "protect" her from negative influences like Gray, even if it meant shielding her from the truth at times.

In fact, Gajeel still hadn't explained to her what had happened when she woke up. All she knew was that the pierced man had met Gray and Gray walked out. She didn't know why the raven haired man left her without so much as a goodbye, but she had the sinking feeling that Gajeel wasn't telling her the whole truth, and that drove her to near insanity.

She was reluctant to go back to her apartment, to the inevitable teasing that came with it, but with every second she stayed alone, she felt wave after wave of anxiety hit her, seemingly endless. She wanted to find somewhere safe, someone safe, to be with. It was stupid of her to think she could just write a random note and get the dreamboat guy to come running. That was the sort of thing other girls did. Girls who were pretty and outgoing. Girls who didn't think about dark things all night or have nightly frights because they couldn't get over their crippling fear of the dark. Girls who were "normal" enough to be able to go outside at night without having fits of fear and panic.

Unable to contain her impatience and anxiety a moment longer, she took one step outside of the section, her head down to the ground, hung in shame. Juvia wanted to hide her face from the prying eyes of strangers. She felt as if she were marked, with a big red target clear on her back for all to see. She felt as if everyone she passed could read her every thought and was laughing at her for it. Even if they didn't know that she had just been stood up, the girl felt paranoid, as if they were all regarding her with pity. She was well aware that probably wasn't the case, but she didn't dare look up to see. She wasn't sure she could handle a single other thing going her way.

As usual, Juvia had made the wrong choice. But, wasn't that always the case. Of course, since she hadn't been looking where she was going, it was just karma that she were to run into something. Or someone.