Is it worth it? Does he like me or is he just playing games?

I’ve been hanging out with my friend, I’ll call him Joshua, since the beginning of the New Year. He often totes me with the label “best friend” in front of our other friends. We hang out often, but mostly in group settings. We haven’t been physical with one another, but we’ve been very close, and are attracted and flirtatious with one another.

When I’m around he never talks about other girls or brings other girls around, and he always pays for everything. He gives me loads of attention, but I’m not sure if he’s serious, freaked out, or just playing games with my head. We were hanging out last week, I was just hanging with my girlfriends, but he kept sitting next to me and hanging off of me. I told him I was going on a road trip, and he asked me to call him and if would I think of him? I said yes.

It was the end of the night, we both had a few drinks in us, suddenly he acts weird and turns to me and says, “This isn’t a relationship, ” really seriously. I say, “What are you talking about?” because obviously it’s not a relationship. He keeps staring at me, so finally I just say, “Well, fine then, let’s not be friends.” Mostly because I wasn’t into the way he was acting. He then preceded to call me an extremist and stormed off down the street. When I followed him, he told me to stop, so I did. A couple of days later I wrote him apologizing, saying that I didn’t mean what I said about us not being friends, and how much I enjoy our friendship, but how I was reacting to what he said and didn’t want to talk about things when I’m drinking because I can’t think clearly. The next night he texted me back, “Susan….eat me!” Although that is part of his normal sense of humor, I felt kind of angry, like what the hell?

Anyways, not sure if it’s worth pursuing anymore. I really like him, and I want to talk about it with him, but if this is the reaction I get, should I even bother? If I don’t bother, is he going to try to reel me in again? Should I even call him from the road? Is he just freaked out or just really immature? Any suggestions? I haven’t played the dating game for a long time….