The Rules and Regulations of Love (Nalu Fanfic)

Chapter Six

Natsu

Rule Number Six: Always Be Confident, Even If You Totally Bomb It

The next day was Saturday, but Lucy and I decided to have a mini-session because I'd be on a date tonight. She hadn't been too happy about me canceling our session for a chick, but I can't go very long without a date. It was just the way I worked. So now we were sitting in the school library, which she had access to any time she wanted. The librarian had been in earlier in the day, but she's left to go home and spend the day with her kids, leaving Lucy and I here to do whatever we wanted. I thought it was cool that the librarian trusted Lucy enough to give her a key to get in here and permission to enter any time she had the urge to come to the school library, but I don't know why it surprised me. Lucy was a good girl; she did all of her homework, helped anyone who needed help, and was loved by all of her teachers. A golden student is what teachers and parents refer to her as. Had I not been helping her, Jellal and I would call her a kiss up. Actually, we used to call her a kiss up before we started hanging out. The day Lucy asked me to be her dating tutor wasn't the first time I'd noticed her. I'd noticed her two years before on the first day of sophomore year, when I walked into P.E. late and saw her get pegged with a dodgeball, watching with worry as she fell to the ground.

"Earth to Natsu," Lucy singsonged, waving a hand in front of my face as she teased me for zoning out. "What's today's lesson gonna be about?" She asked absent-mindedly as she skimmed the books on the shelves we were resting our backs against. Our library had no actual tables, so everyone was always resting their backs on a bookshelf while they sat or just stood. Pretty sucky, right? It's a wonder nobody ever spends time here unless they need a book for a report.

"Being confident even in the worst situations," I said to her, watching her as she stood on her tiptoes trying to reach a book on the very top shelf. Chuckling slightly at her struggle, I decided to be kind and stood up, plucking the book off the shelf with ease and handing it to her, smiling innocently and the scowl she gave me. She always hated it when I helped her with something other than her dating life-I knew this already in the short time I've known her-and she didn't like me overpowering her, which was pretty hard to do when she stood at about five foot two and I was six foot four. She really hated looking up to me, so I usually made it a point to stand tall whenever we were together.

"What exactly do you mean by that?" She inquired, flipping through the book, looking to see if it would be something that interested her. It seemed like every book Lucy picked up interested her though, because she already had a stack of fifteen books, all of which she'd picked out before the one currently in her hands called 'exit here.', which actually looked pretty good.

"Well, let's say that you ask Gray out, but he says no. I'm not saying this is gonna happen," I quickly amended, noting the slightly panicked look on her face. After our rough start, I didn't have it in me to tell Lucy that Gray was already in love, so I was basically just giving her a bunch of lessons instead of helping her land the guy she wanted, because she never would land him. So basically I'm just going to waste our time giving her lessons and creating scenarios where the best and worst things can happen at any given moment. "Anyways, so if you ask Gray out and for some obscure reason he says no, you've gotta play it cool, remain confident and just be natural. Sure, you might feel like throwing up from embarrassment on the inside, but on the outside it'll seem like it was no big deal and he'll just forget about it."

"I really don't see how all of these lessons are going to help me land Gray. I mean, I can understand how the rules would help me, but if I don't get out and actually try them, then what's the point?" Lucy asked me, putting two more books in her stack. I don't recall being able to take out twenty plus books out of the school library at once, but maybe Lucy's the exception to that too. Whatever.