Still can’t get over the rejection of my best friend [f]

First things first: English is not my native language, sorry for any mistakes or vocabulary that doesn’t make sense.

So, I met this girl 1.5 years ago. I’m someone who doesn’t trust people easily. And she is very much the same. But we bonded quite easily. She was the coworker of my (for the time) best friend. They worked in a super market and they had a rough time for a while. Since I had some free time (I’m a student and it was in the middle of the semester) I decided to visit them for lunch almost each day at the super market. So me and her warmed up to each other really quickly. We just get each other and have a vibe I never experienced. Sometimes it’s scary how similar we tick.

After a while I started to develop feelings for her, but ignored it because she had a crush on my best friend. He’s really handsome looking and easy going. At least that’s how I knew him (foreshadowing) I’m average (Some people said to me that I’m above average but who knows if they are just trying to be nice). But my best friend is very insecure about relationships so at first he only wanted to be friends with her. At times me and her were even flirty with each other. But she was naturally flirty so it didn’t mean much. I eventually tried a move on her and she rejected me of course. My feelings for her were too much for me to handle, so I just had to get it out of my system. She wasn’t even disgusted or anything. She told me that our friendship was too precious for her to try to risk it (welcome to the friendzone). I didn’t talk to her for a few weeks because I was so heartbroken. But I realised that the friendship with her was important enough for me to talk to her again. After that we became even better friends. And I was slowly getting over it. My feelings vanished and I didn’t feel any remorse anymore. I even encouraged my best friend to go for her.

The same summer I had to serve in the military (mandatory in my country). On a weekend, when I got to be home, they told me that they got together. At first I was actually happy for them.
Long story short: She wanted to spend the weekends, when I got home, with me. He was extremely jealous and accused her of cheating with me. He told her behind my back that I was a terrible loser and wanted her to stop talking to me. We actually didn’t speak through all of winter and early spring. When we got back in touch I found out that he became a total psychopath, gaslighting the ever living shit out of her and was jealous all the time. She had enough of him. After months of arguing she broke up and started to spend more time with me again after I finished my service.

Through her and some other friends I learned that he talked a lot of shit about me to others. We were friends for 14 years. We went to the same school and helped each other through a lot, even depression. And for 2 years he talked bullshit about me behind my back. So I didn’t talk to him every since.

So she helped me with my grief of finding out that my best friend betrayed me like that. And I helped her through the breakup because she was extremely unhappy in the relationship and had to endure quite some mental abuse from him. We got even closer than before. We spent almost every day together started telling each other everything. Our past, our secrets and desires, even our sexual ones. And as I stated earlier; we are both almost scaringly similar. We both have similar tastes in partners and are looking for the same thing. We’re both not very romantic, but very open minded and up front. We both have no filter and are sarcastic af. Flirty and all.

I began to think again if a relationship could work out. It just makes sense for me and I think we could give each other what the other person needs and wants. But I never even tried to make a move. I always told myself that she made her point clear a year ago and the she would much rather have someone who’s hotter, smarter, better than me. I think she’s out of my league because she is actually really hot.
What confuses me the most is that we usually just behave like best friends. But sometimes she is more touchy with me (not in a sexual way but i guess you know what I mean) and more flirty. We talk more about sexual stuff than before. But at the same time she shows me guys she finds super attractive (of course the jock types) and tells me how much she would love to have a lover again with no hints towards me though. She didn’t have anything with anybody since the breakup.

So my feelings are going wild. I’m constantly telling myself that we are just friends and the next day I feel heartbroken that she doesn’t want to be more than friends. I fantasize more and more about her. She drives me crazy with her behaviour and I don’t know what to do. I feel like all the feelings from a year ago are coming back and it breaks me appart. I absolutely don’t want to lose her as a friend. She is literally the sweetest and kindest person I know and we appreciate our friendship dearly. Even our friends tell us that we are unseperable. I’m just so scared of losing her if I talk to her about it even though we tell each other everything. I cant even talk to other girls because I just think about her.

I mainly wrote all that down to get it out of my head. It is early in the morning and I can’t sleep because of my thoughts going crazy. Maybe you find it interesting, maybe you have any advice or opinions that might be helpful. I really appreciate every bit of help.

Thanks for coming to my ted talk.