Your Best Friend Friend-Zoned You Over Dinner. You Gave Her Chair Away a Year Later.

Over dinner your closest friend of nine years tells you she loves what the two of you have and does not want to ruin it, and that you are better as friends. You say all right, you thank her for the clarity, and you ask what she thinks of the halibut. One year later she walks onto the same terrace and finds somebody else sitting in her chair, and the first thing she says is that you never fought for her. Was he right to take her at her word the first time, or should he have asked her once more before he let that chair go?