Well, um, hi guys :3 Im Rainpelt, you can call me Rain or whatever if you want. I just really need to think some stuff through and tell someone. If you guys have any advice, that'd be really awesome too. This is going to be long, I'm so sorry in advance >.<
So I guess I should start from the top. Ah, this started around January so it's been about six months, but I joined a Venture Scout group, which is a high adventure division of the BSA for young men and women from 14 to 21 by request of a guy friend (we'll call him J) and ended up really liking it. I'm the only girl of three who's in regular attendance, but the guys are really cool so I don't mind all that much at all. Anyway, coincidentally, there ended up being this other guy in the group who I finally realized I had a crush on by what I believe was our third campout/trip. Ah, I'll refer to him as C. Well we were sitting around the camp fire and C and I were talking when J asked me to help him get some stuff from the trailer and pointed out that we were "really hitting it off", to use his wording. That was when I admitted to myself that I liked C.
The problem was, and still partially is, that I've never really been in a relationship, I've never had a boyfriend or anything like that. The closest I got was with J, actually, which was not a good experience and I'm not going to go in to right now. I kept my feelings to myself for a while and J would occasionally prod at me teasingly until I admitted it to him a couple friends at school, but that was that. Until prom (a really large formal dance thing, for anyone who doesn't know) rolled around in March. Then J and a couple of my friends who knew suggested I ask C to go with me.
The problem was that C was two years older than me and thus had already graduated from high school and there was no way I could just get him to ask me. I had to do it myself, and I did eventually manage to work up enough nerve to ask. He said yes almost before I finished asking the question which made me so happy, I was seriously on Cloud Nine for like a week. He made me let him pay for the tickets even though he didn't ask me and didn't go to my school and got me a corsage and everything. I was just plain excited. Prom eventually came and he picked me up and we went out to dinner with a some of my friends before, took pictures and all that. The dance was nice, he's a pretty good dancer and such a gentleman, but I guess you could say we had some issues. We ran into one of his pretty good (female) friends he hadn't seen in a while and had apparently gone out with at some point. She's engaged to be married so its not like she was going to be an issue and I liked her and we got to be pretty good friends as well, but I just... I don't know, I think she made us both kind of uncomfortable, the last slow dance we didn't really talk or anything. He said he had fun when he dropped me off and I swear he kissed me lightly on the neck/shoulder when we hugged good night but I don't know. Oh, right. She also said she thought he "might be starting to like me" but not to get my hopes up.
After that we continued as normal-ish, I saw him every week at our meetings and on the occasional camp out/Venture outing. I was still iffy on whether or not he liked me back because I'd never actually asked. I eventually called him up and asked him in a sort-of-stupid, round-about way. I asked why he said yes to going to prom with me, as a date or as a friend and he said as a friend. I said good, which was probably a terrible answer and i realized it afterwards. I was fine with being friends at the time if it weren't for the fact that my one friend who I called and told asked if he was just trying to play it cool or actually meant it, which got me thinking again.
Since then I've just gotten mixed signals right and left and they're driving me insane. I can't tell if he's just being polite, he can be quite gentlemanly in general, so I don't know if its just that side if him or what. He loves hugs and I noticed that when I give him one his hand tends to linger on my waist for a little while. He's also called me "sweetheart" on a couple of occasions and will ask me how my day has been and try and carry on conversation or buy me a drink or whatever. J invited me to his birthday party a couple weeks ago and decided he was going to invite C for me and did so by telling C that I would be there teasingly (which I know because C told me, I don't know why he'd do that). At the party we were talking about movies that were and C said he wanted to see Monsters University and when I agreed he told everyone that we were going to go on a date to see it (though we did not actually, I had somewhere to be after the party). On our last campout though (this past weekend) I felt like he might have been avoiding me, he just kind of sat out on the dock by himself and took a nap in the boat house while we were all out swimming. Granted he did ask if I wanted the other half of our troop's mostly eaten watermelon when he took one and we went outside and drank the juice (he scraped it clean and wore it like a hat, charming right? cx), but he would just wander out of conversations and went to sleep early the first night without coming over and saying good night to anyone. I don't think he played frisbee with us once either, and he loves frisbee. He's just seemed kind of distant recently and even J said he seemed "a bit uninterested" at his party. The girl I talked about earlier (his good friend from prom) did tell me that he tends to deny himself things if he thinks it will make other people happy and that's probably another reason I haven't just let it go yet, especially when he said he went to the dance with me as a friend. I know she might not be the most trustworthy source but they seem really close and... I dunno, I'm not sure.
Now J thinks I need to make a move and show him that I'm interested and has suggested I take C on a double date with him and whoever J's moved on to now for dinner and I don't know what to do. I think it would be fun but I don't want to push myself on him and ruin a friendship if he really does only think of me as a friend. However if he does like me in the same way that I like him I don't want to just leave it, y'know? So, um... I guess I just want more opinions and maybe some advice. What do you guys think?
Also, I'm incredibly sorry for how long and rambly this ended up being >.<" But I do really, really appreciate any help. Like I said, I've never been in a real relationship and I'm a very shy and nervous person in general.