Search Results: signs of a shy guy interested in me

So I've been friends with this guy for like 5 years and I'm honestly getting really sick of trying to figure out whether or not he likes me. There are a lot of signs that he does, (going to prom with me, being thoughtful, trusting me with personal details, sticking to me like glue in big social groups, inviting me to his church, etc.) and all of our mutual friends seem really confident that he likes me... but there's one major thing that bothers me... HE NEVER COMPLIMENTS ME!! I can't think of a single example in 5 years of him complimenting me ever. He doesn't make me feel loved or appreciated very often in general, only on a few occasions (recent occasions, might I add). He's always been bad at expressing his emotions and never really made a whole lot of social skills growing up, so that may have something to do with it, but the cynic in my mind is telling me that it means he doesn't like me/doesn't find me interesting. Or even that if he's not making me feel loved, then why would he be worth my time? But then the optimist side of me thinks that he wants to make me feel loved, but doesn't know how. So is he shy or uninterested? And if he does want to make me feel loved, how can I teach him to do so? What do you think?

About a month ago, a guy who I work with but only see on occasion liked me on tinder. I have a huge crush on him but have always been too shy at work to talk to him so I sent him a message. He hasn’t responded, and since he wasn’t making a move at work I decided to start talking to him when I saw him. A few weeks ago we were working together and we started goofing around and teasing each other. I smacked him on the arm in a playful way and a bit later in our conversation he smacked me back on the arm. I was super excited and hoped that meant he liked me. He was on vacation for a week so I didn’t see him again until yesterday. I was in the same room as him and was standing in his way so I accidentally backed up into a table and it made a loud bang noise and he looked and me and chuckled. Then we randomly ran into each other walking down the hallway and made eye contact for a second, and just as I was about to smile and say hi he quickly looked down at the floor and turned around and went back into the room he came out of and told the other people in the room he had forgotten to do something.
I feel like I’m reading too much into this and am just trying to find signs that he likes me cause I really like him.