What’s up everyone. First time posting here.

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I’m in a difficult situation right now. I live in the UK and I left high school July last year after my GCSE exams. To sum my sex life/sex appeal/attraction up throughout high school? Beyond terrible. No dress sense, haircut was absolutely pathetic, was overweight(and although I still am a bit, I work out and head to the gym 2-3 times a week, and I look ‘slim-fat’ if you will. I wasn’t massively overweight - 184lb/82kg. It is also worth mentioning that my personality was terrible. I belittled everyone, from friends to random people, but I wasn’t a bully. People did not like me. I wasn’t unpopular, or popular. I was in the good books with the top kids but in no way hung out with them or was invited to any house parties.

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September arrived. It was time to start college. Completely clean slate. I wanted to change who I was so that people liked me, because being liked by people is always a good thing - you get much further. Little did I understand at the time that it gets you nowhere in the world of relationships.

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That’s something else I want to point out. I’m not just in it for the sex. When I develop a crush, it’s after I’ve really got to know the person. Rarely if ever at all do I develop a crush on someone just because they’re hot or pretty. Unfortunately for me this usually ends up with plenty of different issues as I only end up crushing on my female friends. So, that’s exactly what happened. The first day of college, our current friend group - not knowing each other - sat together on the same table, and to this day we’re still all friends, including my current crush. Because looks don’t usually attract me to begin with, even though she’s pretty(other people have said she’s ugly, but I think she’s really pretty and she does get attention off other guys a fair bit). Back then, I hadn’t changed much. I still had poor dress sense, a terrible haircut, and was a little overweight but it had improved by then. I was still unattractive, and a ‘nice guy’.

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Fast forward to present day. I haven’t really shown any interest. I know this is what gets people friend zoned a lot, but at the same time i didn’t really do anything else that gets you friend zoned. For example i rarely texted her, I didn’t give her excessive attention, I didn’t be a door mat for her, and I also hung out with some of my other girl friends and put pictures of us on my story so on and so on. I feel like the only thing I did that got my close to the friend zone was not ask her out straight away, but I had no confidence back when the crush developed.

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Around January I changed everything. I spent hours a day learning how to be attractive. I took a big step and changed my haircut, too. It looks so much better and so much grown up and I just can’t believe I didn’t do it earlier. For the first time in a while, I felt attractive and I felt confident about myself.

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She always treated me different to our other friends, in a good way. I think that’s worth mentioning. For a while I felt like she had a crush on me too, and it was the happiest I’d ever felt.

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Skipping some other events, we’ll fast forward to present day(for real this time).

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We work at the same place. There’s a guy there who is a bit weird, to be honest. He runs about making noises and he’s just not normal. It’s a bad thing to say but let’s be real - there’s no nice way of describing him. He likes her and he won’t leave her alone. He keeps messaging her from 5AM until she goes to bed. He keeps saying he’s sorry and he feels like he’s upset her and he’s asked her out but she said no. She came to me and me only(not our other friend who also works at the same place, or any other friends) to tell me everything. She quit her break to come outside to where I was working and sat on the bench next to me to talk to me about it and show me all the messages he sent. Once break was over for everyone she asked me to come and do the same work with her to avoid him[the obsessive guy] working with her. At the time it was great, I felt like she was making a move or expressing interest by looking to spend time with me, but looking back on it I think she may have just been doing something that’s typical of the friend zone and using me for her benefit, even if we did laugh together and mess about a bit.

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Anyway, we both decided that I’ll add the same guy and see if he talks to me about her. She’s been sending me his conversations on messenger and adding comments about them.

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After doing that for a while, he asked me the question(he is pretty illiterate by the way so he didn’t say it lie this): “do you like Ella?”. We’ll say her name is Ella even though it isn’t. Anyway, I dodged the question by pretending I didn’t see it and continued typing, because I knew I’d send a screeshot of the convo to her and she’d see the answer. When she saw what he asked, she said to me “Fucking hell he’s at the jealousy stage already?”. Anyway, I asked her what I should reply to him, and she said “well he’s stopped messaging me now so tell him we’re just friends”. This is the moment where I feel like I got truly friend zoned, or at least got a step closer to it, because I feel like she’s flirted with me on a few occasions(that and other things that have happened). After I replied, she said she’s going to bed now and she’ll talk to me later, and to have fun talking to him all night(jokingl), to which I just replied with ‘thanks’. I feel like her ending the conversation and also me being her ‘shoulder to cry on’ abou her problem with this guy has put me in the friend zone. I really do love this girl, I have done for at least 6 months now, and I don’t want to let her go. If anyone has any advice on how to both:
A) Prevent yourself from entering the friend zone without entirely confessing.

And

B)How to get out of it if you’re not too deep into it.

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TL;DR:Huge crush on this girl, so much so that I’m sure I love her. Both 17. I have some ‘nice guy’ attributes, but I’m not a ‘nice guy’. I’m also not an alpha male. I feel like I’m gradually getting friend zoned, but I’m not sure if she also likes me too but is just trying to hide it. I haven’t made my intentions clear to her either. I’m not just in it for the sex either. I’m looking for a genuine relationship.

This is a lengthy post and took me a long time to write, so I’ve probably gone off-track here and there and missed out a few crucial details. If you have any questions that can help you in your reply then please feel free to ask as it was probably too much to put here.

I’ve seen some other posts on this subreddit and you guys really seem to know what you’re doing and I’m confident you’ll be able to help me out here. Thanks in advance guys