That whole “nice guys finish last” thing makes me want to vomit, just so you know. If any of you dudes say that, you need to stop it right now. You are not “finishing last” because you are nice. You are blaming it on “nice,” when really it’s probably because the girls you are going after are too polite to tell you that they are just not into you for myriad other reasons.

Also, we need to talk about your definition of “nice.” “Nice” does not mean “pursues relentlessly even though the girl has made it abundantly clear she’s not interested in being more than friends.” For some reason, guys think that’s acceptable, and even romantic. It’s not. It’s creepy and manipulative.

All this is coming out now because I recently listened to a podcast about the dreaded “friendzone.” And the whole thing resonated for me because I’ve been the pursued.

I’m not going to say that Luke was being manipulative on purpose. We were very young, for one thing, and when you’re 16, you kind of get a pass if you are manipulative, because you probably don’t realize you’re doing it.

But I was not really interested in him like that. In fact, I made a half-hearted attempt to set him up with my sister. (And by “half-hearted attempt,” I mean I lightly teased both of them about liking each other. Hey, it’s what you do when you’re 16.)

I honestly, sincerely thought we were just friends at first and there was nothing more to it than that, and I was wrong (and probably stupid) because he was pining the entire duration of our friendship.

I guess I never really felt weird about that before now, but you know what? That means our friendship was a lie. That means that the boy who was my best friend was not really my best friend. He was some-guy-who-wanted-to-date-me. If I’m being honest, that sort of pisses me off.