TIFU by pranking my gu best friend and telling him he was the reason I couldn’t come to our best friends birthday party

So basically what the title says. My best friend, lets call her T, and I have a birthday a day apart and so this always makes plans tricky. This year is our sophomore year in college, in different states, and I didn’t know she would be home during our party and made other plans that happened to overlap with hers. This was no big deal between us and we figured it out with no issues. Even made seperate time to see each other the day of each others birthday.

So T has a god brother, we’ll call him M. He and I became really close during sophomore year of high school and he was really there for me when I lost someone super close to me. At one point we were both closer to each other than either of us was with T. Him and I ended up staying really close friends until he got a girlfriend at the end of senior year. She started to come around the friend group and I think she caught wind of how much our friends would make jokes about us (me and M) being in love and like perfect for each other. Super awkward and we would shut them down everytime, even befofe he got a girlfriend. It became one of those cliches, guy gets girlfriend and she wants him to distance from the girl best friend (which I totally get) and he just randomly stopped talking to me for a couple weeks. In these few weeks, I realized that I may in fact care more about M than I thought.

I was a little embarrassed and entirely confused when I was coming to terms with this. It sounds silly but this guy really was my best friend and rock for a good three years and then he wasn’t and it all just felt really confusing. Like everything took a 180 and then on top of that realizing the whole time I had feelings for him made me feel kind of gross and also guilty. It was just a whole mess so when M reached back out before we left for college wanting to talk I ignored him. I still regret it but I was too worried I’d day something stupid and I felt guilty talking to him knowing how I felt and how his girlfriend felt about me. So I never responded until this last semester we got back in touch. I forget how but we just started sending small texts here and there and then it was like back to the same old. The feelings I had were still there, but I was older and thought I was better at navigating them.

Quickly realized it wasn’t that easy and started to feel that same guilt but when him and his girlfriend has been broken up for a while at this point so I think the guilt was more for lying to him about it. One night, about a month or two ago, we were talking and I just started to feel really anxious about lying. Here is where I think I started to fuck up. I tried to subtly work into the conversation that I used to like him in school, a soft launch if you will. He asked back something along the lines of if I still do and seemed a little awkward so I tried to recover and be like oh obviously not. I tried to laugh it off and I thought he did too but the vibe was just weird after and we’ve talked less and less since. He didn’t say anything else aboutit or regarding it he’s just been not normal when we talk now which is way less than we were before.

So fast forward a few months. T tells me what shes doing for her bday, I say Im busy, we figure it out everyones happy no big deal. That’s until M texts me asking if he’ll see me at the party. I tell him no and he asks why not. Here is where I really fucked up. So M and I have always had this humor where we just mess with each other and do like little white lies for fun if that makes sense? The lie never last more than a minute or two it’s kind of like a prank. We just take turns saying stuff thatvwe know will freak out the other person or make them jump. I fully regret this time however. I would have screenshotted these texts as proof but it was all on snapchat (dont ask why my friends refuse to use imessage bc i dont get it) but I will transcribe it as best I can remember:

Me: “T didnt tell you?”

M: “No?”

Me: “I just don’t really feel like it’s a good idea for us.”

M: “Wtf are you on about”

Me: “After what I told you the other night and you rejected me it just feels awkward and I want you guys to have a good time.”

I thought after this part hed get the joke and wed have a laugh about it but I was so very wrong. It took like ten minutes of typing but next thing he said has been replaying in my head over and over the last few days.

M: “Okay I think we really should talk about this in person but there has definitely been a miscommunication if you think I would have rejected you.”

Did your heart sink? Because mine definitely did. I couldn’t tell if this was a positive or negative response, so then I majorly MAJORLY fed up when I panic responded saying it was a joke and I didn’t think he’d take it serious. WHY WOULD I SAY THAT? I am still kicking myself for it I have no idea why. Like even if he didn’t mean it in the way I hoped I still could’ve gone about tha better 🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️🤦🏼‍♀️ Anyway it’s been like almost a week now and besides from his response of “got it👍” (oof), I haven’t heard from him. I don’t think he told T because she’s been totally normal which makes me even more nervous bc he tells her everything. I just needed to get this out bc I have been sick over it everyday.

TL;DR I told my guy best friend/crush I couldn’t go to our best friends birthday party because of my feelings for him as a stupid prank and now I think I ruined our relationship for good…