Hey guys, this is gonna be long... but PLEASE read and help me out. The main goal of this post is that I want to be able to read women better so I can at least make reasonable guesses about their intentions, although tips about what actions I can take will also be extremely helpful.
So a few days ago I ran into a girl that I had not seen in a long long time (about two years). This is a girl from another college campus, about 3 hours away.
A little history
(feel free to skip this if you like as I realize that now this post is too long): When we first met a long time ago (it was through her friends), I had heard from her friends that she thought I was cute. We went to a club, she was pretty aggressive, basically offered to buy ME shots so I could go dance with her. Long story short, I messed it up, didn't know how to work my game at the time, didn't know what I was doing while dancing with her, didn't do the kino escalation, and basically nothing happened. She still facebook friended me, poked me (I poked her back... ahhh why did I do that), and we talked on aim and on the phone, blah blah blah, but I quickly ended up in her LJBF zone.
I really liked her and got mad at her for leading me on and then blowing me off, but in reality it was all my fault because I just didn't know the right things to do. Eventually I ended up going onto her campus one day, and hooked up with another girl at a party in front of her. No I did NOT know the game, I was just drunk and got lucky. But I ended up making her really really upset (like sitting in the corner crying upset). So she is the jealous type.
After that, we talked a little bit more over the phone but nothing very significant here. Maybe some attraction got built up with the whole jealousy thing, but it quickly subsided and I was again just her friend. She dated some guys (had much more success than me in dating), and would talk to me over the phone when she got dumped, using me as like an emotional bandage. It really sucked. Like I said, nothing very significant here, except this one time I started talking about her cheeks (the few times I had hung out with her, I loved pinching her cheeks). I think this may have been the only thing I did right, besides the hooking up thing, because it made her really self conscious about her face looking fat, but at the same time she loved that I found it cute. Almost immediately after I said that, she asked me when I could come up to her campus to visit her. I was a pussy, never went for it, besides I didn't know what exactly that meant (and with good reason, as you will soon see). We stopped talking eventually and lost contact with each other.
Fast forward a year and a half: I ran into her randomly in another city. First thing she did when she saw me was give me this really big enthusiastic hug, almost tackling me to the ground. We had lunch, exchanged numbers (we both lost our old cells), as she said she wanted to keep in touch again. We talked a lot for a few days (something like an hour or two every night for like 3 nights). Now I KNOW this is something that an AFC would do, and if I really wanted her I should not have talked so much. But to be honest I actually had no expectations about getting with her, as I saw her as out of my league. I was talking to her purely because I did truly enjoy talking to her, and I figured it was a good way to improve my conversation and storytelling skills (and yes I know many of you would say I should be out talking to other girls who are more available, but like I said, I genuinely liked talking to her).
It was platonic rapport building, and though she did kinda use me as an emotional bandage at one instance to soak up her woes (she told me she got into a really really bad breakup that really made her depressed for a few months), we also talked about a lot of other interesting things, and I would often make her laugh and could tell she was having fun.
And then came the signals which I did not know whether to interpret as IOI's or just more "friend" talk. She told me her jaw muscles hurt because
she had not smiled this much in a long long time and really enjoyed talking to me. While talking about what was going on on my campus, she suddenly told me
"you should come visit me in (her state where her campus is at)!!". I told her I didn't know if that was such a great idea (I did not want her leading me on again only to screw me over, and besides it was 3 friggin hours away) and she told me I was
"thinking too much". I told her I'll think about it. We started talking about food, and how I heard she was good at cooking, and she once again told me
"you should come to (her place) and I'll cook for you!!". Again I said I'd have to think about it.
Two days ago, we talked again, and by this point, I just did not know what her intentions were anymore, and I just did not know how I should talk to her. She ended up telling me about how she really was sick of this whole hooking up with people thing and
"she just really wanted to settle down and have a boyfriend". I thought maybe this was a sign that she was talking to me as a friend again, except then she said
she now wanted to go to grad school on my campus! And then she told me
she wanted to come to my campus the next day to see me!! 
She was gonna come with some of her friends (because she had no car), and said she
would even pay them to drive her to come see me. I told her that was fine, and when they arrive, her friends could meet my friends, but us two should go ditch the crowd and eat somewhere. She told me she would
love for just us two to spend quality time together and that she would love for me to show her around the city.
She also asked what kind of desserts I liked because she wanted to cook something for me.
By this point, I thought to myself, there is NOO way she wants to just remain friends. Would a girl really want to drive 3 hrs just to see a guy friend? Especially since we were not even friends for that long (we only recently started talking for such a long time)? So I had thought the whole thing was gonna fall into place pretty easily.
I don't want to drag this post on much more, so long story short, she came we went out to dinner and to a club, and
the most I ever got from her was her holding onto my arms (the interlocking arms thing), leaning her head on my shoulder, and some multiple kisses on the cheek. But when I went for the kiss close, she backed off (saying I was drunk and she hates it when guys try to make out with her at a club). Eventually she said I was a good friend again. I was mad at her and asked why she would lead me on like this if she never saw me as more than a friend, and she said she never tried leading me on, she acts like this to all her good friends. She said she knows when she's flirting, and none of what she did was flirting. Now I KNOW it was the dumbest thing for me to ask her about her intentions, but I was genuinely shocked and angry and I really was not thinking when I asked her that.
What happened here? I'll describe my interactions with her in more detail, but for now, I just want to know if she truly saw me as a friend or if perhaps there was even a slight bit of attraction there, but I just screwed it up. For now, since this post is getting rather long, I'll just say that in retrospect my interactions with her were terrible... as always I did not work the kino very well, hugging and pinching her cheeks are the only things that I could do to her with great confidence (she loves it when I pinch her cheeks). Somehow, I still got to hold her hands and random kisses on the cheek, but I don't think it means very much without kiss close. I also did not even try to do any of the push pull, neg, game routines, and I just tried to be a nice guy and a gentleman, which I think really screwed me over. Before coming, I had also joked about how I was so nervous now because she made me out to be like some super great storyteller and she was hyping this visit so much, now I had to live up to her expectations, and she told me not to worry about it, because she wanted
things to be spontaneous and she wanted us to play this by ear. That's another reason why I think there was at least some possibility there, and that she was keeping that option open, provided that I did the right things.
For now, can you guys just tell me if I had any hope at all? I know I obviously need to improve on how I interact with girls, but if my mind-reading was off too and she truly saw me as just a friend the entire time, then it means I have an even bigger problem to solve first.
(Btw... if your wondering how and why we even consider such LDR, we're part of some group that is across many different campuses and is really closely knit... roadtripping is very big part of our culture, and so it's not that big a deal. I really don't want to reveal too much LOL)
Thanks in advance!
CHAT