I confessed to my longtime best friend during a trip, and now I’m confused

She has been my best friend for about 12/13 years. Seven years ago, something happened between us that made us drift apart. Around 10 months ago, I decided to reconnect with her, but honestly, my intention was just to rebuild the friendship. I didn’t think there was anything more underneath it on my side.

The same night we reconnected, we ended up kissing, but nothing happened after that because she was seeing someone else at the time. I tried to move past it and keep the relationship in a friendly place.

Over time, though, I realized I kept thinking about her. I kept asking myself why she was always on my mind, even though there was apparently nothing going on between us. After talking about it with my psychologist, I realized that I genuinely like her and that I’m really into her. It doesn’t feel like something that suddenly appeared out of nowhere. It feels more like something that was always inside me, but I had never really understood it clearly.

We almost never text or talk in everyday life, but we see each other roughly every two weeks because we have concerts planned together throughout the year. She got me into this passion for concerts, and now it has become mine too. In September, we are also going to another city for a concert and we’ll spend the night there together.

She has never given me clear signs, at least not as far as I could tell. I always experienced the relationship as a friendship, even though I later realized that, for me, it’s deeper than that.

The Budapest trip happened pretty randomly. Less than a week before the trip, I went to visit her at work, and while we were talking, she told me she wanted to use her two days off to go to Budapest alone. Then she looked at me and asked, “Do you want to come?” I gave her a sort of yes, because I had to see if I could take a day off work at the last minute.

During that trip, I told her how I felt. I had thought about preparing what to say, but in the end I was spontaneous. I told her that I like her simply because she is her.

She seemed to expect something because of some recent things I had done. She hugged me and said something like “that’s cute.” Right after that, though, she explained that she couldn’t give me a clear answer right now, because she’s trying to understand what she feels about someone she had been seeing. From what I understood, she doesn’t know whether she’s still hung up on that person, or just hung up on what happened with that person.

She also told me that I’m free and that she doesn’t want to stop me from having other experiences. I interpreted that as, “I’m not keeping you on a leash while I’m confused.”

That same night, while we were in bed, I jokingly said something like “come on, at least give me a kiss,” and we ended up having a soft kiss. Nothing more than that.

Now, after the trip, we’re not really talking, and I’m asking myself a lot of questions. I wonder if she likes me, if there is any hope, or if I’m reading too much into an ambiguous situation that, for her, might just be affection, confusion, and friendship.

Right now I feel like I have three options: let it go and move on, wait for her without seeing other girls, or do what she said and not stop myself from having other experiences, maybe even casually. The problem is that I think I already know what I would like to do, but I can’t understand what is actually right or wrong in this situation.