Search Results: good time to pursue him

I have (or had) a good friend who I met at work. I will call him "Skylar" for the purpose of this post. He used to partake in ride alongs at the county EMS department with my other friend.

He was 18 at the time. I think I was 20. Skylar grew up in an abusive home and my other friend, who I will call "John", who was in his upper 30's, took him in and became almost a father figure to him. They lived together in a trailer.

Skylar used to be an energetic, fun-loving, wild but kind kid. He had a passion to become a firefigher, and he used to be fun to hang around with. We used to go fishing, have bon-fires, and get drunk. We had a very youthful, "young-wild-and-free-" type friendship.

But then it happened. He pursued this girl and they ended up falling in love. He had some let-downs too at that time, and he started to become closed up and explosively violent towards John, the guy who took him in when he was neglected by his father. He started hanging out with me less and became controlled by his extremely jealous, manipulative, and self-conscoius girlfriend. He tries to act tough and put on an act for his girlfriend, but he is causing tension with his friends.

I was talking to this girl that recently broke up with her ex and in the beginning everything was good. We were hanging out and talking all the time. Then she told me that she feels like we were going too fast and that she wants to take things slow and that she just got out of a relationship so she’s not ready. We were hanging out & talking more.
I took her out to pick pumpkins. She had never done that and was getting all touchy and what not and I was confused but at the same time I just thought she was opening up to me.
After a while things weren’t feeling the same but we were still hanging out, started talking less. Would take forever to reply. We had another talk and it was the same as the first one. We continued to hang out. Then one day I asked her why did you and your ex break up and things got serious and she broke down in front of me about him. And how she never would like to feel the way he made her feel. I thought from there things would get better but nope it continued being more confusing. i had planned a trip for the both of us.
we took the day trip and things were going well & we spent the whole day together. Came back. She was taking longer to reply or sometimes not reply at all. It went from good morning and goodnight texts with hearts, talking about meeting her friends, and buying me things to nothing. one day I was fed up. It had been a month already and I was lost.
I tried to get her to come out with me so I could tell her in person but something always came up. So I just called her and told her how I felt and she was basically telling me the same thing, and how she sees us being friends and how she likes hanging out with me too and how she’s just not ready. told her it’s best if we don’t talk for a while. we didn’t talk because I wanted to give myself time and have her know that I’m not here to play games. But I just don’t want to give up on her, because she’s honestly a pretty cool girl that I want in my life. What should I do? Help please