Love didn't mean being happy. Isabella had known that from the beginning.

Love is about longing, depression, hatred, denial, and pain. Love is when you find someone that puts you through hell, and for some bizarre reason you find yourself unable to walk away from them despite all the pain they inflict.

When you love someone you give them the power to destroy you, and even though you know at the end of the day that's exactly what they're going to do… you can't help but give into them anyway.

Isabella looked up at her bedroom ceiling with tears in her eyes. She didn't even try to wipe them away.

Sometimes it was hard not to blame Phineas Flynn for everything. She knew it wasn't his fault, but sometimes she just needed someone to blame.

Phineas couldn't help it if he didn't like her back. Sometimes the connection didn't go both ways.

It still hurt though. What hurt the most wasn't that he'd rejected her… it was that she still liked him. It had been months. She should have gotten over him by now.

She knew he felt guilty every time he saw her.

He knew her too well. She'd been neighbors and close friends with him and his family since kindergarten. No matter how well she could hide her inner turmoil from everyone else, he could always see it. She couldn't decide if that amazed her, frightened her, or angered her.

It was hard enough to deal with a broken heart, without him constantly asking her if she was okay. He knew that answer to that just as well as she did.

Of course she wasn't okay. It was obvious.

She still told him she was fine, just so he could pretend she was alright. She liked to see him happy, even if she wasn't.

She was starting to think that maybe she never would be happy again, and worse yet she was starting to accept it.

She'd liked him for as long as she could remember, since way back when they were just kids in the play pen… and sixteen years later nothing had changed. Except everything.

She was still the same Isabella that used to sell fire side girl cookies, help build magnificent machines all summer long, and smile at anyone who looked her way. She was just all grown up. Less naïve. More realistic. More miserable. But weren't those just the normal side-effects of aging?

Phineas and Ferb were a thing of the past. After their parent's divorce their brotherly bond had slowly dissolved. Isabella hadn't seen Ferb in god knows how long. He wasn't social by nature, so once he moved away he rarely made an effort to meet up with any of his old chums.

Isabella always thought that, maybe, he just didn't care. Maybe, he just wanted a clean break from his old life. A fresh start without Phineas, Candace, Baljeet, Buford, or her. She could understand why. The divorce had been a messy ordeal. If the same thing had happened in her family she probably would want to erase as much of the past as she could. Ferb probably just wanted a clean slate, and she could respect that.

He crossed her mind from time to time, but as the years rolled on she slowly found herself letting go of the memories she'd once held so dear to her heart.

Candace had moved in with Jeremy a couple months ago and didn't come by very much. Isabella was happy that she got her fairytale ending. Not many people could say the same. She barely talked to her mom or little brother anymore, and she'd never been that close with Isabella in the first place.

She could still see Buford and Baljeet anytime she wanted, they both still lived in the neighborhood after all. She used to do so quite a bit, but after a while they drifted away like childhood play-mates have a tendency to do.

She was too old for the fire-side girls now, and had been for a couple years. After she left the troop she found her old friends slowly leaving her. Some of them just went in different social directions, some moved away, others just disappeared. Honestly Isabella had forgotten some of their names. It was strange how close you could be with someone yet after a little time and distance the bond is forgotten. Eventually even the memories of what once was begin to fade away.

Phineas was the only one left.

She'd been content to live that way. She missed the others, but as long as she had Phineas she could survive.

Then a few months back she'd finally told him how she felt. His rejection was like a slap in the face to her that never stopped burning.

Isabella looked at the picture of him that she always kept on her nightstand. His smiling eyes stared back at her, and her heart broke a little more with every minute that ticked by.

She wished she could have him back. Not that she'd ever really had him in the first place.

No, she wished she could have the dream of him back. The hope. The possibility.

She wished she could go back to running away from the truth, and pretending that he liked her back. She was so much happier when she could live in blissful ignorance.

She couldn't go back now that he'd burst her bubble no matter how much she yearned to. She'd always known it would be like this at the end of the day. That's just how love works.

Love isn't a happy thing. It's a horrible, grueling, traumatic, thing that you can't help but be obsessed with. It's tears, hopeless dreams, loneliness, and restless nights.

It's never being able to give up on that one person, despite your better judgment, despite all the misery they put you through. You just keep coming back for more even when your mind's screaming at you to run away because you'll just get hurt more than you already have, even if you cry into your pillow every night, even if you can feel yourself losing your grip on reality…

You'll always go back, because you don't know how to move on.

That's love. Isabella knew that, just like deep down she always had.

She turned her back to the picture of Phineas, but she never could turn away from him for long. Even in his photo form he held some kind of hypnotic magic in his eyes that pulled her too him like a moth to a flame.

She looked at that picture all night long. She didn't stop crying until she fell asleep, burying her face into her wet pillow.