My last comment was deleted because it wasn’t constructive enough. Let me try to remedy that.

I completely agree that the confession part was not done in a way that fulfilled it’s possible potential. It felt forced and rushed. It was such a prominent plot point that had been built up for a while. IMO it would have been better for her to talk to a friend like Uhura who knew what was going on anyways. This could have made for an intimate character development moment. Like so we had more of an “alien of the week” moment.