The miscommunication was next level. “Let’s be harmless to each other” and then proceeds to cause each other 300+ pages of agony. Maybe I’m projecting. I was the one in agony. There’s a difference between yearning and pining, and these two are top tier piners with the communication skills of a rock. Actually, that’s offensive to rocks because they’d at least stay in place long enough to hear what the other person had to say.