Falling for my straight friend and hate that she reciprocates affection, this has been so confusing

So to start, yes another “I’m falling for a straight girl” post, there are countless on here. I’m writing this on a burner because I’m extremely quite about my feelings towards her and wouldn’t like our friends and then her finding out about post.

So to the obligatory the rundown, I met her almost a year ago. I had recently ended a relationship with my ex girlfriend and had been urged by my friends to “get out there”. I always hated dating apps but a friend recommended “hinge” because it has a lot of queer women, apparently. That’s where I found her, with some nearly blank dating profile with nothing but a handful of poorly taken photos, and “looking for friends” in her bio. What the hell, why not, more friend are always good!

Me met up, we hung out, and to be honest I was absolutely star stuck because she the most gorgeous woman I had ever met, she was incredibly funny and insanely kind on top of that. She asks me if I want to cuddle and watch something, I say yes, we lay there for a bit, I was even starting to get my hopes up and then “oh! That must be him getting home from work, let me introduce you to my boyfriend!” My heart dropped, shattered, whatever. The girls straight, and later confirmed it outright when I asked about her sexuality. So I slashed my romantic expectations, and we kept hanging out as friend’s because I did seriously enjoy her company none the less, so she’s just a friend, don’t let myself develop feelings, easy.

But that’s not how this ends up going. I try my best to keep distance, but every time we hang out she asks to cuddle and watch Yuri (the girls a fucking self proclaimed“himejoshi”, her walls are filed with posters of anime girls from her favourite lesbian romances, her fucking Lock Screen is from that anime, idk the name but it’s the “green lesbian one”. Which kinda baffled me because she claims to be straight as a board but that’s besides the point) I struggle to say no, especially because I have had no luck through dating apps besides meeting her and have become kinda touch starved from being single for over a year and half now, so I say yes every fucking time. We do this for months, I come over once a week, we talk about drama in our lives, she pulls me in to cuddle (she doesn’t even ask anymore it’s just our routine) and we snuggled into each other while watching whatever dumb anime she puts on. Her boyfriend doesn’t seem to care, “girls will be girls” he says, or whatever. But it gets worse, she’s started doing things like gently grabbing my waist from behind while I cook for us, cuddling has becomes more intimate to the point it’s no longer laying on eachother, now its “squeeze you solfty, run one hand through your hair while the other draws little shapes on your skin”. She started flirting with me outright, calling me cute, saying I smell amazing, I swear to god I catch her eyeing me up constantly and even once made a “hay honey, my eyes up here” joke which she responded by giggling to and blushing. I ask if she’s like this with other women, she says “I’m like this will all my girl friends, girls are just like this” like yeah sure,, I get that but tbh, I’m not THIS intimate with my friends, so maybe it’s just a her thing? I ask, she struggles to find examples but lists off a handful of people she’s like this with. Which I later find out, yes she is still touchy with them, but not nearly this intimate at all.

Then it gets worse, I introduce her to my friends, we go to parties. She’s handsy with me in front of all of them to the point they start asking questions about us. I tell my friends “oh no she’s straight, shes just like that” to which the response I get is raised eyebrows or more questions. This came to peak a month ago when at a party, when she thought no one was around she straight up kissed me, and not lightly, like we made out. She was like “woh, idk what came over me lol” and I, in panic, left the room. I asked her if there were any feelings behind it, she said no, just friends doing friend things and blames it on being drunk. Next party, she doesn’t even get halfway through her first drink before she pulls me off to make out with me again, this time passionately in front of our friends. We are glued to each other the entire rest of the night, I take her back to her apartment, I walk her to her door, she calls me out on my bullshit of just trying to get another kiss, I smile tell her she caught me. Then she proceeds to slam me against a wall and we make out again, before she wishes me goodnight and enters her apartment while I stand there stary eyed, blushing like an idiot, trying to rack my brain around what the fuck just happened.

Now after all of this my friends are all convinced she’s gay, I’m starting to question as well. I’ve absolutely caught hardcore feelings after all this, and try my best to keep it under wraps out of fear I’ll scare her or ruin things. I also keep quiet about my feelings to our friends so this doesn’t blow up and make it back to her. We just keep doing our routine, meeting up and melt into each other. I finally muster up the courage to ask her how she feels about me, and she responded with “I don’t know, we’re just friends and should stay that way, I don’t know, I think I might be attracted to you, but I’m straight….I don’t know what my feelings are when it comes to you. It’s confusing so I don’t think about it to much”WHAT DOES THAT EVEN MEAN!!!! 😭😭😭

She has a boyfriend still, he has no issues with all of this, that’s if she was being honest with me when I asked if he’s like knows about the kissing thing. We still hang out, more frequently then before, she’s over at my place regularly, saying she doesn’t want her apartment to be the go to place anymore because her boyfriend is there and she wants alone time with me. I feel like my head is spinning, I fucking made a playlist for her, I think about her constantly, we text every day, I’m absolutely head over heels.

Is this just another “straight girl plays with the lesbian for attention” thing? I’m not pushing her at all, she’s pretty much made every first move on me, and I struggle to pull back. Is this a tactic to keep me interested in her? Or is this like a…. Something awakened in her type deal. I don’t even know. I just need to talk about this to someone, because I’ve been sitting on this for the past year sense I’ve met her.