Does he like me, or do we just have really good chemistry?

(17F) So, I’m currently talking to this boy. We’ll call him Apple.

Apple and I have been friends before, and we were actually much closer during our freshman and sophomore years. I liked him first, and apparently, he liked me too. At one point, he wanted to be in a relationship with me, but I declined because I wasn’t ready for a relationship at the time.

After that, we didn’t interact nearly as much. There were still little glances here and there, but we barely spoke. Junior year came around, and we hardly interacted then either because I was in a situationship with someone else and had a whole thing going on with him. Eventually, that situation ended badly, and I stopped talking to that guy completely.

Now I’m in my senior year, and Apple and I have gradually started interacting again. At first, it was mostly playful fighting, teasing, insulting each other, and just messing around. Nothing too serious. But then I started noticing that he does a lot of small, thoughtful things for me. He’ll hold my things, put stuff up for me, help me with little things, etc. Maybe he’s just being a gentleman, and maybe I’m reading too deeply into it, but there are other things that make me wonder.

For example, whenever I leave class and roam around, I’ll run into him, and he’ll walk around with me. We’ll just talk and walk together, and sometimes he’ll follow me around until it’s time for his class to start again. He’ll also do things like poke my side because he knows I’m ticklish there, or grab my neck because he knows I like that. There’s definitely a playful/flirty dynamic between us.

I’ve even started going to football games mainly because I want to see him.

After the first game of the season, I texted him and told him he did well. He said thank you, and from there, we gradually started texting more and more. Eventually, he started texting me first pretty often and replying to my Instagram notes a lot. Sometimes it honestly feels like he’s finding excuses to start conversations with me.

Every once in a while after school, he’ll ask if I want to play Roblox, and we’ll get on a call while we play. There’s usually some flirting involved, both romantically and sexually, and I’ve been completely comfortable with it.

Tonight, I just got off the phone with him. We ended up staying on the call for two hours, which is way longer than we usually do. Normally, our calls are around 30–40 minutes.

The whole two hours were basically us playing Roblox, showing each other our dogs, talking and messing around, and then he started playing his guitar and singing for me. There was flirting throughout the call, too. We were just really comfortable with each other.

At one point, my mom came into my room and ended up talking to him for a little bit. She asked him what sport he played, and he told her football. She then asked him if he was okay because she had heard about his concussion. He said he was okay, and she told him to be careful and stay safe.

After my mom left, he laughed a little and asked me, “So how does your mom know I have a concussion?” And I just smiled sheepishly and acted like I had no idea.…But obviously, he already knew what that meant. My mom knowing about his concussion pretty much implied that I had talked about him to her before. He also told me afterward that he thought my mom was really cool, nice, and sweet. Like aww 🥺 whatever..

But NOW I’m sitting here wondering what exactly is going on between us??

I genuinely can’t tell if he actually likes me romantically, if he just enjoys flirting with me, or if we’re simply really close and have good chemistry. I know he clearly enjoys talking to me and spending time with me, but I’m having trouble figuring out what he actually wants from me...