The problem with the gags at this point is that each of the main characters has been informed that the other cares very deeply about him or about her. There's room for humor because the awareness isn't what, in game theory, is called “common knowledge”; that is to say that she doesn't know that he knows how she feels, nor does he know that she knows how he feels, &c. But the primary admissions stopped being revelations some chapters previously.
(And, yes, it is very plausible that two people, especially two young people, would each fail to proclaim their affections even knowing that those affections were complemented.)