Girls, How much trouble am I in?

[Anonymous]

A friend is mad at me for... making a situation awkward and we really don't need to go into any more detail than that... The other night she was actively avoiding me at a party (i. e. turning away any time I looked in her direction). But a mutual friend who stayed by her side the whole time kept meeting my gaze in a way that at least did not seem hostile.

So put yourself in the mutual friend's shoes. Are you doing this just out of curiosity about the unusual tension between us, or because you're trying to subtly communicate some kind of message? And what would the message be?

[SueShe]

The question here is: Why did you keep gawking or staring at her or looking in her direction?

If you noticed that she avoided your look, then you should have realized she was not interested in looking at you, chatting with you or interacting with you. So what were your reasons for doing what you were doing?

I don't really see what hidden message could have been attempted to come across. It was simply that she did not want to interact with you and I don't think that you should overthink the entire issue. There was no chemistry and that is about all there is to see in the entire situation.

[Asker]

Ummm... She's a friend, not some rando. Normally in a social situation I would go talk to her, if she didn't approach me first. I was not staring, but I kept peeking in her direction to get a sense of how far off from normal the current situation is. There's a whole spectrum of possibilities that had to be assessed, ranging from:
her coming to say hi to me once she noticed me > me being welcome to say hi but her being unwilling to initiate a convo > not super interested in talking to me but not against it > actively avoiding. And in particular, given that it is a delicate situation, I did not want to create any perception that I was intentionally avoiding or ignoring her.

[CupcakeTheDestroyer]

They were watching you to make sure they intervened if you tried to come close