Search Results: getting closer to a guy

There's this guy I know, lets call him James. We've always got along very well with James and if I ever need a helping hand I know I can ask him (I rarely do ask him and he also knows how to say no).

When I was still just casually seeing my ex (who turned out to be an ass), James was always trying to get my attention and get me to spend time with him rather than my ex and he pulled all these tricks to sabotage what ever was between me and the ex back then. Yet he never said a bad word about him to me.

Lately I've been spending time with one of his best friends and James has again started making himself more a part of my life. He seems to want to hang around me asks me to different events and is super happy to see me and always asks my friends about me and is telling them to say hi to me for him. He's started liking most of my social media posts and so on and so forth.

What I'm wondering is: Is he
a) Happy that I'm seeing his best friend or
b) Glad that I'm "taken" so he doesn't have to worry about me being interested in him
c) Figuring he might have a chance too if his nerd friend does, so getting closer to me or
d) Jealous and trying to get in between

He only talks to me in real life. Whenever I text him, he only replies with short answers and the conversation doesn’t continue. In real life, we talk everyday and he doesn’t mind body contact from me. He avoids body contact from my female friend such that he changed place to stand beside me instead of my friend. I place my arm on his shoulders he doesn’t seem uncomfortable too. There was once when my hand was still on his shoulder and he turned his head such that his face touched my hand. I’m pretty sure he felt it but he didn’t react and his face continued touching me for around 3 seconds. After that I went to Google for signs a guy likes you and it states that if a guy doesn’t avoid body contact from you, that’s a very good sign. We aren’t very close in real life but we are friends and have been classmates for 4 years. He tends to borrow books from me. I’m sure he isn’t a player or a jerk and he isn’t super close to any other female classmates. He’s just a gentleman. But there’s a girl in class whom he doesn’t seem close to but I know they talk online. He even lend her his sweater but I haven’t see them talk in person b4. I’ve been seeing this girl hold on to his jacket for around a month and I’m getting really confused, is he secretly dating the other girl or something? Or does he probably like me for a little bit? Is he closer to me or the other girl?