I (18M) am going on a date with one of my coworkers (19M), we’ll call him Chris, in around 12 hours and I’m not sure if he likes me. I know that typically the rule is if you’re confused on if he likes you then he probably doesn’t but I don’t know if I can apply that to this situation.

Here’s some background: So Chris and I met at work through a mutual friend (I’ll call her Emma). Both of us worked there prior to Emma but only met and interacted when Emma introduced us to each other. From then on we were acquaintances and didn’t interact much but after a bit we slowly started interacting more and occasionally talked when he would pass my work space.

I eventually started teasing him and it was soon after I realized I had a crush on him. I ended up telling Emma and she thought it was amusing saying that Chris was pretty cool though she didn’t push or anything.

A day or two later though Emma noticed an interaction between Chris and I, I grabbed an extra pen from my bag in the back and showed it to him. It has a hedgehog on top and he booped the hedgehog. After he left to go back to work Emma smiled at me and told me that she thinks I should ask Chris out. I refused, saying that there was no way he liked me and that I wasn’t going to.

After that during my break I went into the break room and noticed Emma (on lunch), Chris (also on break) and a few other coworkers sitting together at a table. I sat down with them and Emma swears that as soon as I sat down Chris started blushing. She got me to notice his red face but I’m doubting it was because of me since the group was laughing a bunch.

I later ended up asking Emma to give Chris my number. And when she did he texted me almost right away. And then there was an incident where I was hanging out with my friend (A) during my lunch and we ended up running into Chris and he seemed super nervous.

I ended up asking him on a date over text because I couldn’t handle the thought of asking in person and after 6 hours of silence I received a text back saying sure.

We seem to get along really well and for a bit we would text almost every night after work (though the conversations were shortish) and I felt like someone other than my best friend cared about little things like if I ate something or that I went to sleep at a decent hour.

Now though with our date suddenly right around the corner he’s leaving me on read and not replying to my texts. I get being a bad texter or being busy or forgetting to respond but idk what it is.

I hate sending multiple texts because it makes me feel clingy. Ig the only reason this is such a big deal to me is because if I feel like someone doesn’t want to be with me or is uninterested I lose interest super super quick.

I just want other people’s input. Most of my friends think he likes me and I feel like I may just be overthinking things. But some advice would be appreciated.

I’m hoping our date goes well. I’ll keep anyone updated.

TL;DR: I’m going on a date with my coworker but I’m confused on if he actually likes me.