All those years he'd been pining away for Lydia Martin, or just wishing someone would notice him, he had no idea how damn difficult an actual relationship really was. He had an easy friendship with Scott, they could practically finish each other's sentences, but that was so very different from a relationship with a girl, with any kind of significant other.
And really, his relationship with Malia wasn't even a good comparison. They'd hooked up in an asylum, after all, on a dirty forgotten couch on a dusty, forgotten basement. And then he'd been possessed by an evil spirit for a while, putting the brakes on any sort of functional relationship. Then Malia had been there, and really, they hadn't had time to experience the ups and downs of a real relationship before he'd ended up in this post apocalyptic world, completely on his own for nearly a year.
He had nothing to fall back on, no previous experience to light thew way through this uncertainty. He remembered when Scott's parents split up, when his dad left. But that was nothing like this. His own parents had never even fought in front of him until after his mom got sick, and then, she just didn't even know what she was saying, so that didn't count either.
"I really mean that, Joey." He took a step toward her. He may not know what he was supposed to do, but he knew he needed to do something.