Should I pursue a friendship with my straight crush, or nip things in the bud?

[FumoBlu]

Hey all, sorry this is a bit long, but could use feeback.

 

So let me preface this by saying that in 13 years of being openly queer, I've only ever had 2 crushes on straight women (this being the second, and the first one actually did have a secret gf for a year, and then went on to marry a man and be really straight) so I'm definitely not the type to chase straight women. I pretty much assume everyone is straight, and take people at their word regarding orientation. I guess I just need people's advice and/or a swift kick in the butt.

 

Basically I live in a foreign country and work as a camp counselor at an English summer camp for the native children to learn more English. A lot of school classes come to the camp, and at least two teachers usually come with them. This past week one of the teachers that came was my age and totally gorgeous. I figured she was straight, but the job is pretty hard and strenuous so it helps to have a distraction for the week, and talking to her was really nice cause she was totally nice and friendly, but also a bit of a smart ass. After the kids go to bed, the teachers will usually chill and have a beer with us counselors, and I think the second or the first night we were talking and in the back of my mind I was wondering if maybe she would quite possibly be a little bit queer since she was talking to me in a way most straight women wouldn't in this particular culture. Then she mentioned her boyfriend at some point (who's a professional athlete/soldier, because of course, of course he would be) and I kind of wrote her off then.

 

However, throughout the week we kept talking in the lunch line (we serve the kids and teachers lunch in an assembly line type of deal) and she'd always stop at what I was serving and make some kind of conversation. Then one day I was teaching the kids to play softball, and I asked if she was gonna play with us, she initially said no and was hesitant but then joined. She'd never played before, so I helped "correct her batting stance" and she seemed comfortable enough with me touching her. She then hit a line drive directly into my shoulder, and her next hit was a line drive towards my head (both total accidents). From then on she'd always make it a point to ask how my shoulder was, and we'd totally joke (and what I'd interpret to be flirting if I didn't think she was super straight) about it. She even kind of rubbed/patted my shoulder a couple of times.

 

The last day of camp we take the kids on an all day hike, and she had had knee surgery so her older coworker was concerned about her supervising the hike. I made some joke about how if it were truly an emergency I could try and carry her back, and the old co-wokers said, "That sounds like something a boyfriend would say to a girlfriend." Of course I was super embarrassed and lied and said I didn't mean it like that, but my crush totally took it in stride and it didn't seem to bother her. On the hike it seemed like we both kept trying to talk to each other at certain points. My co-workers (a bi-sexual woman, and two straight men) also said that it seemed like she was indeed flirting with me back, but I think she's just really friendly and fun. However, even though I'm also super friendly and fun, and have in the past been misjudged to be hitting on people when I'm just really friendly, she did respond to some stuff much differently than I would towards someone I'm just trying to be friends with. When we were watching the kids totally mess up the rules at capture the flag, she was laughing really hard and started excitedly hitting my thigh, like you do when something is really funny, then kind of realized maybe that was weird to do to someone you don't know that well, and did it to her own thigh.

 

The last night she started mentioning her boyfriend more, and was talking about all the stuff they were going to do this summer, so I made it a point to just write her off for good this time, and not try to see her again once work was over. However, the last day, she asked me for my number, and said to call her if I went to a certain bar we'd talked about. I said that I was in her part of town frequently for work (which is true) so she said we could meet for coffee. This was Friday morning.

 

I would normally have waited to contact someone, even a strictly platonic new acquaintance, but my Mom is coming to visit me for two weeks, so if she was a bit bi-curious I wanted to suss it out, so Sunday evening I texted her and asked if she wanted to meet up for coffee before my work today, and she said, "she'd very much like to have coffee with me" so we met up. She spent all weekend with her bf (and I found out he has a totally stereotypical macho name, and from her description is a beat of a meathead) so again I figured it was just totally and completely platonic on her end. However, when we were paying the check for the coffee and the waitress asked whether we were paying together or seperate, she said together, and tried to pay for my coffee. It was only like $2.50 and I had close to exact change already in my hand, so I said no problem I could pay for my own. She was like "Well, we'll see each other again, you can get it next time." Which ok, doesn't mean anything, but she didn't have change that was as close as mine, and then had to look for it, and was totally slowing the process down, so again I said I'd just pay for my own since at this point it would have been a lot faster/efficient for this to happen, but she wasn't having it.

 

Finally, she asked when my mom was leaving cause she was also going to go on vacation when school was out, so it was obvious she was asking cause she wanted to meet up again before it would be too late.

 

So at this point, I don't think she's interested in me romantically but it's really obvious that we click on some level (for her platonically) I don't have many friends here yet, so I really could benefit from her friendship, but if it's going to turn into some huge unrequited thing on my behalf, then I figure maybe I just shouldn't talk to her again. However, I truly think that maybe at this point I could try really hard just not to crush on her anymore and pursue a friendship and see where it goes. The unrequited monster crush vs. Friendship is just at a totally 50% level right now, so I'm not sure what to do :-/