Former AFC here guys, feels good to finally have an account on here.

So I met this one girl (HB9) that has a boyfriend. She is generally friendly to everyone, but she has given me IOI's more than she gives to other dudes I have seen her around. Currently her boyfriend is out of town and she invited me to hangout because she is lonely (low self esteem I think...it's actually part of my question). When we did hangout, she invited two other female friends to come too which gave me the impression that she had no intentions of getting into a situation where I might try to pull something. One of her friends had a boyfriend as well and the other one had just gotten out of a bad relationship so there wasn't much to be done there in terms of making her jealous, regardless I had a fun time so it was all good.

Right now I'm definitely still in the friend zone as I don't want to throw myself into AFC territory like every other guy that wants to bang her (if she dumped the bf I really would be glad to take his place). I really don't want to be an orbiter, I feel like I've played it pretty well so far and don't come off as needy at all (she invites me to do way more stuff than vice versa.) But I'm unsure of how to escalate for two reasons.

So she gives me IOI's (Makes excuses to run into me, adjusts her clothes/ hair when I talk to her, I've caught her staring/smiling at me when I appear to be looking away.) But then she always talks about her boyfriend, most of the time in a neutral way/ good way. I've chosen to just ignore it or side with the boyfriend while pointing out that I would have done so and so (what she wants the boyfriend to do). Is this a shit test?

She also tells me stories of how other guys always check her out or try to be with her. The weird thing is, she pretends to be totally oblivious to the fact that she's an HB9/that these guys are hitting on her, and I'm not quite sure whether this is a bullshit act or if it's just low self esteem. She really is pretty shy so I could believe low self esteem. Because of this, I'm not sure whether I should be negging (from her stories it doesn't sound like she would take these well) or giving her compliments once in a while (might feed her ego if this is an act).

Where should I go from here? I hope I don't come off as her wall to bounce her banter off of but that's sort of how it feels right now. Maybe I should just walk away for now before I get too invested in something that's not gonna pay off?