" Maybe I selfishly figured out Clay was as lonely as I am. Or maybe I did hope he was pining after me a little. Not realistically, of course, but in a faraway kind of way. Like in the way one might daydream about a popular boy in school who the teacher assigns as your lab partner. Your relationship is purely based on frog spleens and formaldehyde, but sometimes he laughs at your joke and you think... maybe. Maybe.

It's the "maybe" I'm mourning. The daydreams, even. That's what I'm all out of sort about. My lab partner asked someone else to the dance, and I'm left with the uncomfortable realization he was just being polite. "

― Erin Hahn , You'd Be Mine