Can’t tell apart friendship from feelings (24F)

So some quick context, I am a 24 year old woman finishing up college and I have never dated anyone before.

I developed a crush on my classmate and decided a good way to be closer to him would be to make friends with the two people I saw him spending time with (we’re all in the same niche major and have to take many of the same classes). Turns out they’re all amazing people and now the four of us are a pretty tight group, we spend a lot of our school and club time together and have recently been hanging out off campus as well.

Here’s where my emotional confusion comes in, my other male friend from this group is leaving for an internship and his upcoming departure is making me realize how much I care about him. This is confusing me because I can’t tell if these feelings are a crush or if it’s just because I consider him one of my close friends and I’m sad to see him go.

Since I’ve never dated I don’t know what those emotions are supposed to feel like. I always assumed it was like what I felt towards my first crush, but now that I feel it towards my other friend too I don’t know if that’s just what friendship is? And I’m just not used to having close male friends?? (it doesn’t help that they’re both tall, handsome, funny guys)

Part of me thinks I should try and find connections like this again on a dating app to try it out with less stakes, but at the same time I care about those two guys so much that I find it hard to believe I could make that connection with a stranger on the internet.

I feel like I need to try asking out my initial crush, but I have low self confidence and am ridiculously worried that a confession would weird him out and destroy the group that I love so much.

Anyways, idk what I want other than for us to all remain parts of each other’s lives. This very much could be stress from my impending graduation and life changes.