Sam had always imagined himself at Harvard.

Graduating from his pre law degree had felt less like an ending and more like the first checkpoint on a road he had been planning since high school. Now he spent his days buried in casebooks, highlighting judgments, debating classmates, and trying to stay awake through endless reading. His tiny apartment just off campus was hardly glamorous, so he covered rent by working several shifts each week at the local Starbucks.

His customers knew him as polite and well spoken. His professors knew him as ambitious. His friends knew he had one very obvious flaw.

Sam was unbelievably picky when it came to dating.

He never intended to be rude about it. He simply convinced himself that if he was going to invest his time in someone then she had to be almost perfect. Smart. Funny. Beautiful. Confident. Ambitious. Effortlessly charming. Every woman he dated seemed incredible at first, but within days he always found some reason why they were not quite right. One laughed too loudly. Another hated reading. Another wanted to move overseas after graduation.

None of them lasted longer than a week.

His next door neighbour, Elena, had watched the cycle repeat itself enough times that she no longer bothered asking how his dates went.

The two had become unlikely friends after accidentally collecting each other's mail during their first month in the building. Since then they shared meals, complained about university, and occasionally studied together in the evenings.

That night Sam sat across from Elena at her small dining table with a plate of homemade pasta in front of him. The apartment was warm, quieter than his own, and a welcome break from reading legal theory all afternoon.

As the sat, Elena admitted that she hadn't been seeing anyone because, for quite a while now, she'd had feelings for Sam. She confessed that every dinner they shared, every late-night study session, and every casual conversation had only made those feelings stronger. She knew he probably didn't feel the same, but she couldn't keep pretending otherwise.

Sam sat in silence for a moment, caught completely off guard. He cared about Elena deeply. She was one of his closest friends. But the feelings she was describing simply weren't there for him.

"Elena.… I'm really sorry. I care about you a lot, but only as a friend. I don't see you that way, and I don't want to lie to you or give you false hope."