Does My Best Guy Friend Like Me? I Can't Tell!

This is long, but I’d REALLY appreciate some advice! It’s a “what do I do with my best guy friend” question haha

I told my best friend, Mike, who I’ve known for about 7 months, that when I had first met him I had a small crush on him, but I “got over it” (I clearly haven’t). He responded with, “Aww :) well, when I first met you my intention was to hook up with you, but you rejected me so I got discouraged. But I’m glad we became friends, because if we hooked up, it would have gone down a different path.”

Long story short, I didn’t mean to reject him, he mistook my actions for rejection. But we became very close after that, and now we are best friends. We flirt constantly, sleep in the same bed sometimes (although he tries to avoid touching me in any way), he drives from his home a half hour away to be with me just to see me for a half hour at a party, meets my friends and gets along with them great. We text each other every day, talk on the phone basically every day, go to the gym together occasionally, and sometimes, when he’s drunk, he wants me to kiss him on the lips. I do, and he likes it, but we don’t do anything past a peck. His close friend asked me if I liked him or if I would hook up with him, and keeps sort of hinting to me that Mike likes me. Mike always touches me in a flirty way, and when we dance at clubs, it gets intense. He even holds my hands, which is something he doesn’t do with any other girl he dances with. He’s told me that he thinks my girl friends are hot, but he’s never actually pursues them. He is constantly telling me about how he reads too much into girls’ actions, and he tells me about the girls he thinks are hot or he wants to hook up with, which is either him trying to make me jealous, or a clear sign that he’s just not that into me. But, at the same time, my friends tell me that “it’s obvious that he likes me.” Multiple times he has randomly said things like, “Man, we are a good looking set of friends.” I am the one girl he is always, ALWAYS spending time with constantly… even when other girls he is apparently into fling themselves at him. He still hangs out with me so much more than he hangs out with them. If he wasn’t that into me, wouldn’t he not be around me as much as he is? Or is it just because we are best friends?

He isn’t over his ex girlfriend and he vents to me about that, and he’s told me that he isn’t looking for a relationship right now, he just wants to hook up and try to forget about his ex. I know 100% that he doesn’t want a relationship, so I got that… I’m not looking for that with him (at least not right now). But that doesn’t necessarily stop him from having feelings for someone! My gut instinct is telling me that he DOES like me, but since he’s told me constantly that he needs encouragement from girls in order to pursue them, and the fact that I had “rejected” him in the beginning, he isn’t making a move on me anymore because he thinks I put him in the Best Friend Zone. I feel dumb for asking advice about this because I feel like I should know. But I just can’t figure it out. And it’s seriously just pissing me off at this point.

Thanks for reading! Means a lot.