There's this girl in our group of friends that I want to get with.

Background: First 2 weeks at grad school and we met the first day. We've managed to build a nice group of friends, to the point where I've only had one outing alone with her, which went very well. After the first few days it totally seemed like we were about to escalate things and our friends saw it too, the other guys even gave up... mutual attraction was definitely there on multiple levels. But something just kinda fizzled??

Now the problem is that our large and expanding group of friends is totally unintentionally getting in the way of anything happening. Because we all hang out almost literally all the time in groups of 5+.

On the other hand in the time since we've met I've been on a date and she has guys hit on her all the time, but I guess what I'm getting at is that before I can really friend zone her (which is what it's coming to) I want to try to ask her out or get her alone without fucking things up with the group. But I guess as I write this my only solution is to just straight up ask her. While I know I'll get flamed for it either way, that's fine, and I'm pretty sure I wouldn't be cool with just being friends.

It makes it harder given that I'm fairly certain she's only had like one boyfriend who was more of a 'i'm on vacation' type of fling. Given that she's a hot 23 year old, normal, social person it kind of says a lot.

She does invite me to stuff all the time, but again it's always group stuff. And I guess I have to say vice versa.

If I had to guess I would say that she is interested. But it's hard to distinguish between her being shy and being uninterested.

I'm usually pretty good at the kino game, and I suppose I'm the only one she touches, but when she does, she does like an awkward/uncomfortable push or whatever if that makes sense.

So I'm gonna stop this venting now, but

TL;DR 1. How can I distinguish between this girl just being shy and not being interested? And 2. If question one does not lead to her explicitly stating interest, how do I act on it without disrupting our friend group here?

And for the record, I don't think this is entirely just a typical case of manning up and asking her out. Ok, well at least it's more complicated then a 'what're you doing friday, wanna have dinner? just the two of us' type thing. Although maybe that's what i'll end up doing anyway.