"Oh, girls are emotional, all right." Alex knew this first-hand, from a million female cousins, and Mona. She'd only had one sort of meltdown since he'd known her, and it was perfectly justifiable, but yeah. Emotional was a good word.
"I guess it's just... I didn't want to be saying it just to be saying it, you know? I mean it's easy enough to say 'I love you too', but if I didn't really mean it, and she thought I did, then it'd be more hurtful later, than it was when I didn't say it at all, right?" He looked at his mother, wondering if he'd even made sense just now.