In a nutshell:

Met a relative of a close friend and have known them for about 3 months. Only spoke two weekends with them, and this last weekend I got a lot closer to them.

1st time around (few months back) is when I met this girl, pretty nice, I kinda zoned them out didn't really try or focus on getting w/ her, wasn't my objective at the time.

This past weekend, I've tried to game her a bit more compared to not even trying (as I did last time). Me, my friend, and her went to the club together and overall just had a good time. I danced with her a bit but didn't escalate to hook-up at the time because I wasn't sure if my friend was cool with it. I asked him later in the night and he said go ahead and that he didn't care.

A lot of kino, push-pull, and intense eye contact whenever we talked, she'd always stare me in the eyes if I went for the contact as well.

We were heading back to his place, and she laid down with her head on top of me in the cab while my buddy was up front. I pretty much just caressed her the whole time including her chest (which, in order to contain anonymity, was all but fully revealed). She said it gave her chills, and started doing it back, of which definitely started to turn me on.

Anyway we ended up all laying on my buddy's bed, with each of us on a side of her. She was not against snuggling, and was constantly putting herself up against me. I'd definitely been putting my arm around her, so it wasn't all her doing.

I wanted to go for a kiss, but I wasn't really sure how to escalate further even when my buddy left the room. We were just chilling playing Xbox even then there was hardcore flirting. She left the room to go hang with some of the other residents of the house, but came back in less than 5-10 minutes (I didn't follow her, I knew it'd appear needy). She went back to cuddling and while I slept on a blow-up mattress, she wanted to lay with her head closer to me, but my buddy didn't let her (her feet in his face, lol).

The next day, we both needed to go home to the same place, and I ended up driving her (this wasn't out of the way or a hassle -- wasn't some BP shit. I'm trying to preserve anonymity here location-wise). From here on out, I'm gonna refer to this girl, my target, as S.

From there, her friend asked me to grab lunch with her and my buddy, but I was busy and said I couldn't. Later in the night asked the friend if they wanted to grab dinner, and they said they were on their way out to dinner, and she offered to pick me up. In the car was S, the friend, and another friend of friend.

Overall dinner went really well, I lead into the restaurant and S sat right down next to me in the booth. I don't wanna fall into gay-best-friend territory, so I tried to keep my chatter to a low. At one point S referred to it as a date, and overall I think the dinner went well to where I was more of an alpha. On the car-ride back I took shotgun while S drove, and she joked saying "Maybe I should put my hand on your thigh on the whole ride back." I didn't escalate since the two others were there, but as they dropped me off she asked for a hug, of which I provided.

Besides this, I didn't contact her the rest of the day, and only today did I message her asking for her to contact her relative for me. She replied quick (she was driving) and I called her up and we chatted for 10-15 minutes before I had to leave. I called back 2-3 times because I kept getting phone calls which would end the other ones briefly. It was FaceTime calls with her while she was in the car and seemed very interested.

Later that night she snapped me, and I replied with a pic of friend and my buddy + me, and she instantly FacetTimed my friend, just as she was getting out of the shower. She once again called our encounter a "date," and joked to "not let [me] see me changing!" Regardless I played it cool, and now it's long-distance between us until September. Maybe a meet-up through my buddy during the summer.

From this point, I don't really have any concrete interest in pursuing her, but based on the IOI's, do you think I should try to make it work, or just take the L, accept the friend-zone, and move-on? The friend thinks I'm really funny (I'm not interested in her, nor is she in me), but I'd say I think I have a good plug through her to put in a good word for me with S.

Any feedback & criticism is appreciated.