I'm In Love With My Best Friend, Whos Painfully Shy..

As the title says, i'm tragically in love with my best friend.. Shes painfully shy to the point of awkwardness in simple conversations.. Flirting is like dropping a conversation stopping bomb.. She has an awfully irritating boyfriend.. And i don't say this because i like her, He's just.. Awful. The reason i didn't go after her a year ago was because him and i were friends, and i decided to let him try his luck. She'd had a boyfriend when he started "wooing" her, i figured he'd fail. What a horrible mistake that was. We've been friends for about three years.. I know she trusts me, thinks of me as her best friend and blahblahblah.. But like, we used to talk all the time.. Now its almost never, and if it is, its small talk. Which is pitiful.. It fluctuates though, one month we're glued to each other, the next we occasionally text. Its horribly confusing. I've never had so much trouble with a girl in my life, Nor have i ever had one mean so much to me. I thought i had a plan on what to do, but now i'm not so sure.. Thought i'd put it out there and see if anyone else was a bit more resourceful then my brain seems to be..

I might be wrong here, but from experience, the reason you are close one month and not the other, might have to do with the mood of her relationship with her current boyfriend. When things are going well, you don't here from her much, when things go no so smooth, she contacts you more.

What i might suggest is to drop how you feel on her when you're in that period of time when things are going well with you two. Timing is crucial, like most things in life.

If she's very shy as you say, you probably need to make your move.

Worst that will happen, you'll end up where you started, her friend.