We ended up at his place after a Halloween party, cuddled together watching Minecraft videos. My head was on his shoulder. His head was resting on mine. As evenings with a friend go, it was making a fairly determined effort to look like something else.
We’re both 19 and have been friends since we started college. We spent practically our entire first year together, although I had a boyfriend then. That relationship ended. This friendship carried on, which was lovely, except that somewhere along the way I started wanting a slightly different job title.
He began inviting me to gigs, just the two of us. He also invited me over to his place alone. I wondered whether that meant he liked me, but nothing happened that time. It’s difficult to tell whether someone is taking things slowly when you haven’t established that there are things to take.
He has never been in a relationship. I don’t know whether that explains the rest, and I’m trying not to turn his entire dating history into evidence for the answer I would prefer.
Then came the Halloween party. He picked me up, and we went out with some of our other friends. After they left, we went back to his. That was how we arrived at the Minecraft videos and the shared head support. I like him: he’s nice, smart, and funny. Being tucked against him was hardly helping me maintain a detached interest in the friendship.
I had to go home a little later. He walked me there, we hugged, and he told me I looked really nice. There was nothing especially cryptic about the compliment. It was the question of what went around it that kept catching me out.
Because away from those evenings, I’m usually the one starting our conversations. We send each other reels, and he does initiate some music-related things, but most of the time I text first. The contrast is what makes me hesitate. In person we can end up cuddling; on my phone I can feel like I’m doing the opening act again.
Our friends sometimes joke that we’re a thing. He doesn’t seem uncomfortable, but he brushes it off by saying they’re being nerds or something along those lines. That could be embarrassment, or it could be him being perfectly accurate about us. I can’t use his lack of a dramatic denial as a declaration of love.
My dad has offered another possible complication. At some point I told this boy he should get a girlfriend. What I meant was that I would be available for the position. What I actually supplied was a general recommendation. My dad thinks that might have affected how he reads me. Apparently my idea of making my interest clear involved suggesting he date an unspecified woman.
So I’m wondering whether to make a move, with a friendship I care about sitting underneath the question. I don’t want to risk it, but I’m not neutral about him anymore. I’ve managed to put my head on his shoulder and still leave the important part entirely unstated.
