I need some advice here

Hey all-!

I found myself kinda frustrated and confused about this relationship I have with a guy that my friend introduced me to.

I’m a female, 16, teen here and the person in question is a 17 year old guy. We have been friends for a good solid two years now and we met online by a friend on accident. It’s a long story and definitely not needed right now, but we have met in-person three times now. We became friends slowly and I really was (and still am) adamant about being friends, chatting up, and hanging out with them. We’re a bickering duo, I like pushing his buttons or annoying him but also love our deep conversations or when we’re both playfully bickering with each other. When I met him, he was very playful, nice and pretty elegant and gentle. He helped me when I was struggling with night terrors and being generally insomniac for a good period of my life during quarantine, talking to me while I go to sleep and staying on call, being nerds about the things we equally liked, and helping each other with our problems. I genuinely liked him, but he had a girlfriend so I stood my distance, I respect him and his relationships.

During some time though, he was going through a tough time and a break up with his then-girlfriend and he slowly became more of a shell of a person at this time. At some point, during this period, we started talking more about some really intimate things that we liked (brought up by a meme I saw) and sooner or later; it got into a steamy conversation about what you could only imagine coming from teens and unhinged hormones. But anyways, we decided to stop there because boundaries, y’know. Yeah? No. I believe we were in a call alone because our friend (the one who introduced us) had went to bed. So we were there, and he brought up that steamy conversation we had and I found no harm in it and answered some questions, I’m not sure exactly what happened, but it turned into well- It crossed the boarder. Big time. From then, we engaged in a lot of lewd things together (with boundaries and rules — no photos, face-time during these things). But sooner or later we pushed aside all of that and just fully engaging in lewd activities over the phone together.

Throughout this, I was conflicted and confused (not my situation right now though) about our relationship and he just said that we’re still best friends and there were no feelings in it. I wasn’t really okay with it because “hey, I still kinda liked the guy and my feelings were getting involved here.” kinda deal. But nonetheless, I kept going with it even when sometimes I wasn’t really up to it or tired. And as this went on, he just kinda..stopped talking to me as friends but as someone with benefits. Like, I try to talk to him, (this is all on Discord), he either just doesn’t bother answering @‘s anymore or goes offline. When him, our friend, and I all are in a call together and I try to talk to him he just doesn’t answer, but when our other friend talks to him (female 18), he responds immediately or when they @ him, he responds more to her than me. He barely interacts with me, but when it comes to something lewd or intimate he starts it and he’s passionate, sweet, caring, and patient. I just..I don’t know what to do anymore. I feel like I destroyed something nice, something fun that we had because of a stupid conversation we had.

What should I do? Should I just distance myself or say something?