Is it normal that im in love with my best friend?

Hi, id like to start off by saying that im in the closet and im in love with my best friend but i dont know if he is gay or not... When i first saw him i instantly liked him and thought he was cute (weird because he is not really my type) i never really became close with him until we sat at the same lunch table in school. During lunch we randomly started to get closer and he would start acting gay towards me (slapping my ass, staring at me, always touching me,etc.) in front of everyone. I dont know if he was just joking with me but of course i started really liking him. We started getting close by going to a lot of parties together and i wish that i could get him drunk to see what he would do but he cant because he is diabetic. We now hangout all the time and he sometimes does very gay things and it always makes me want to just kiss him! He always holds my hand randomly, gets his face really close to mine while he talks and his friends have to pull him away from me (they think he is gay and im turning him even more gay), he always tells me he loves me and doesnt want to leave me, and he always hugs me and doesnt let go for a while which i have to get him off of me so that my other friends wont know im gay (but really want him to never let me go). But heres where it gets weird, he always talks about girls and recently kissed a girl for the first time (tongue) and i think he wants to do a lot more with girls ( ive kissed a lot of girls before while he only kissed 1) also a while ago i texted him and told him i was gay and he said he would still be my best friend but he will never be gay (im hoping he said that because someone in his family was reading my texts when he was texting me) and i told him i was lying about being gay because i didnt want our friendship to change. Its soo weird because all my friends think we are gay and an actual couple but i dont know what to do and want to know if he is gay or not so badly because i love him and just want to kiss him every second of the day.. HELP ME PLEASE!