Desperate Unanswered Love

I can only assume the natural progression of events went she found a boyfriend before he could confess to her himself. Once his avenue for confessing to her was gone, he went the "maybe I can fake it till it works" route that a lot of people really do fall into for various reasons. He could have confessed sooner, but I sure as hell remember being deathly afraid of ruining a long friendship by confession in my 3rd year of middle school. Ruin it I did, since it became kinda awkward until we drifted apart (to be fair, she was a lot less awkward than I was since I had a harder time compartmentalizing my feelings). It's more than enough to keep many a hormonal teen at bay.