Just as a heads up all the names here are made up.
I like a girl from my college class, and her name is Emily. For some context me and Emily are currently friends, and we hang out with a few more people during most classes and during most of the free time we get at college (rarely with Shawn if that matters, I’ll get to Shawn in a bit). I’ve liked Emily for months, and our group of friends knew since I told them. I also recently found out that she was getting a bit suspicious and asked them if I liked her, to which they said they didn’t know. Also, Emily and Shawn went to the same high school, where they were friends, never anything more.
But I saw something this week that leads me to believe she likes Shawn.
For around an hour during class Emily was on her phone, and I noticed she was texting someone most of the time. I also noticed she smiled a lot while texting and frequently looked at someone, and later I realized it was Shawn. While they were texting, Emily took a picture of the bracelets she was wearing on her wrist, and after class, Shawn approached Emily, and she gave him one of her bracelets, which he then put around his wrist.
I don’t know if this is some norm or something friends do, but I honestly doubt it. For example, one of my friends from high school had about 4-5 bracelets, all from girls, and they were all just his friends. But another friend of mine from high school wore only one bracelet, which was from his girlfriend. And Shawn also wears only one bracelet, that one from Emily.
I think they like each other, and this is their way of starting a relationship. And if it really is, then I don’t know what to do with myself. And no, there’s no way I’m going to ask or tell Emily anything. If she likes Shawn, I wouldn’t want to cause her any problems about it. My problem is that I can’t stop thinking about this. It’s been about 4 days since then, and I’m thinking about it most of the time, it’s eating me up inside. I don’t know what I’d do if they were together. I mean of course I would be happy for Emily since if she’s happy, I’m happy too. But even the thought of her with Shawn breaks my heart.
To add to this, **and this is the part that I really need some advice for**, Emily’s birthday is in 4 days, and before all this happened with Shawn, I got her a birthday present. The gift is a bracelet (it’s sort of fancy, and I know she likes the look of it since she mentioned it). Now I’m reconsidering giving it to her, and don’t know if I should give her the bracelet at all. I have three main reasons for this:
1. I don’t want to embarrass myself and act like an idiot.
2. I don’t want to put Emily in a very uncomfortable situation where she and Shawn like each other, and I’m giving her gifts like this.
3. Giving her the gift might make her uncomfortable, and I don’t want to jeopardize our friendship, since I do also consider her a pretty good friend.
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TL;DR: I like a girl, but I think she likes someone else. I bought her a sort of fany bracelet that I know she likes for her birthday present, but now I don’t want to make her uncomfortable or jeopardize our friendship by giving it to her if she likes someone else.