The novel opens with the narrator lamenting that he is getting rejected by his teacher, who is "dense, dorky, gutless," and who has never been "popular with the ladies" . He tells us that he has been "living with unrequited love" for the past year, and that he was "painful," but also "kind of fun" , because he had to "take things further" in order to make love work. He asks his teacher for advice, and she tells him that they have "a lot of happened between us," but that it is not like they "hate each other," and that she is still his student, not "ex actly." He tells her that he wants to talk to her about his feelings for her, but she is not the kind of person he would want to speak to, and so he asks her to be clear, so that he does not "get the wrong idea." She says that she wants to know how she feels, but that she feels that way because she is "just worried about me," and she says that this is what made her fall for the teacher in the first place