22M/22F Caught feelings for my friend of five years. How do i handle this?

Hey everyone im (22M) in a dilemma. To preface this, we’ll call her Alice (22F)

So Alice and I have been friends since 2020 and hit it off when she asked for my help with some online assignments we had during our first year of college. I thought she was attractive and i initially went into the relationship with the intention of asking her out. Unfortunately, i waited too long and some other guy ended up doing it first. I wasn’t really hung up on it and shrugged it off, continuing to be platonic friends with her and losing the initial feelings i had since she had a boyfriend. We started to become close friends mainly due to the fact that it was still the pandemic era and she was one of the three only people i talked to in college. We would hang out on campus a-lot and go everywhere together for most of the year until our third semester started.

She had suddenly cut contact with me and we had stopped hanging out. The reason for this was her boyfriend at the time. He didn’t like the fact that we were always together nor that i was friends with her, making her unfollow me everywhere on social media and blocking me on all our messaging apps. To be fair though i kind of get it, I wouldn’t be too happy either if my girl had some guy best friend she was always with.

I really didn’t want to be labelled as that stereotype so i kept my relationship with Alice strictly platonic from then on and kept my space. I also got a girlfriend and hung out with Alice less which kinda sucked cause i didn’t really have that many friends in college. We would still text on occasion and send Tiktok’s to each other but that was about it.

Over the course of our college years, Alice and her boyfriend were on and off many times until she finally broke up with him for good. I didn’t wanna dictate her actions since it didn’t concern me and i had a girlfriend at the time but i was really frustrated at the fact that she kept going back to that shitty relationship. He was real toxic to her and even cheated on her, but as her friend all i could do was just support her and clown on her for her poor relationship decisions. I also couldn’t say much because the girl i was dating at the time was my ex from years ago and id be labelled a hypocrite.

We’d eventually graduate and start hanging out more often but we were still strictly platonic friends. After a few months, i would break things off with my girlfriend and start my military conscription. My breakup hit pretty hard and Alice was there to support me, poking fun at the fact that we were both pushovers for our exes. As my training continued in the military, id start to hang out more with Alice on my days off. We’d also text and call whenever there was any free time. It was weird because we were still just friends but it felt like i was dating her. Still though i didn’t want to push it and wanted to remain platonic. One night while we were hanging out on the beach she mentioned that i was her only guy friend at that point and that she appreciated me for treating her normally. We continued talking and she suddenly hits me with the ‘I used to like you’ and i just blanked. I then mention to her that i liked her too when we met but her ex asked her out before i could. We basically just stared at each other for a few seconds before laughing it off and continued talking.

After that night we didn’t text and hang out as much anymore. I started to develop the same feelings i had for her when we met and now the relationship just felt weird. I have so many mixed feelings about how to proceed because if i do ask her out, i might ruin our relationship since it’ll make me look like I’ve been faking our entire friendship just to date her. If i don’t though then i’ll just keep thinking about it over and over even though i am a grown man and never tell her how i truly feel cause i’m too afraid. I also have basically no one to talk to about this because i have like, three friends. As of now we just text and send stupid tiktoks to each other like usual. I also really regret waiting so long.

TL;DR: Grown ass man too afraid to ask his friend of 5 years out because he thinks he might be perceived as only being in the friendship in hopes of dating her.

Additional note: i only made this post because i was scrolling through instagram and saw a post about a guy best friend asking his friend out and it was so cringe i wanted to die..