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The key and the challenge to any satisfying ending is that you must in one way let the audience know exactly what to expect, yet from another, they should be surprised at how they get it. What makes this even possible is that the expectations you build are emotional expectations, while what you deliver is the practical ways those emotional expectations get satisfied.
One of my most frustrating reading experiences was a novel by a talented new author, who clearly foreshadowed a tragedy in the opening pages, and then delivered a happy ending. It made the entire book feel like a waste of time, and NOT because I have anything against happy endings. What she promised was not what she delivered.
In a short story it can be difficult to both build expectations and subvert them, but it can be done, and quite efficiently. This link leads to a very short story by one of my favorite authors, who is known for quirky originality, Haruki Murakami. Note how, right from the beginning, we know the two principal characters do NOT end up together. So we aren't expecting a happy ending. At the same time, the description of the girl as "100% perfect for me" implies some sort of love story. And in fact, both of these pieces of info are implicit even in the title itself, "On Seeing the 100% Perfect Girl One Beautiful April Morning" (note: "seeing" NOT "meeting"). This defines the puzzle of the outer story, which is how these two characters can both connect and miss connecting. Then, for the inner story, the narrator explicitly foreshadows both the hopeful, fairy tale, "once upon a time" beginning, and the "sad" ending. At the end, we do get the promised love story, but only in memory/imagination. It's a potentially frustrating ending, but it satisfies the reader because it is exactly what we were promised, yet a completely original way of getting there.
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