This is going to be a very long story, if you're willing to help, please read through it, if it's too long for you, then I won't mind if you leave.
So... Me (male, straight, 18), live in spain and have a best female friend who lives in germany. It was all fine until half a year ago, when she told me about a guy she had met and made out with on a party (the dude she made out with was a well-known asshole). That was the first time I felt really jealous of her having something with other guys. That was when I thought something inside me had feelings for her. I told her on christmas about it, she said either way, she would not start a relationship with me, because if it goes wrong, the friendship would be gone aswell. Even though I got a no from her, I kept feeling jealous every time she just mentioned a guy from a party. I was never certain about my feelings for her, I just think it's love because of the jealousy (even though i don't want the love for her). Heck, maybe it's not even jealousy, but just the urge to protect her after bad things happened with that asshole I mentioned. I really don't know what my true feelings are, nor how to find out.
Fast forward, with a few painful nights in between, one month ago a girl came out of absolutely nowhere and told me she had had a crush on me for a year already. I didn't know her from anything, so I told her that I obviously can't have any feelings for a girl I don't know whatsoever. Somehow, I managed to keep talking to this girl after rejecting her, we've been talking all day-every day until yesterday. She turned out to be the probably most interesting, open-minded and sincere person I have ever met. I have interest in her, a lot of it. Though, I don't know whether the interest is just to use her as a tool to cover up the feelings for my best friend and get out of the pain, or because I genuinely am falling for her. Either way, I went ahead and told her that I had interest, but that I wanted to take some more time to get to know her better
Trying to focus on the new girl, I told my best friend to get some distance between us, and just have short talks from time to time. All good until yesterday. My best friend tells me about a dude on a party again, I get upset/jealous/WhateverItIs. I told the new one about what had just happened and how I was feeling. She came to the conclusion that I might feel jelly for her, which is caused by me having feelings for her. Oviously that upset her, since I had told her that I had interest, but then turns out that I still feel for my best friend; I tried to tell her (genuinely) that she has gotten very important for me over the course of the past few weeks, and that i have her on my mind all day long. She told me to not talk to her for a while and get my feelings sorted; and that's what I'm trying to do.
I know what I want, but I don't know how to manage my feelings acordingly. I want to desperately fall in love and love this new girl, and just forget about my best friend while still maintaining the friendship, even though I am willing to sacrifice a lot of it, because I'm afraid that she has the potential to awake feelings for her again with anything she says.
Right now not talking to the new one makes me feel empty, the whole day today was painfully boring and sad, I had nothing to be happy about, nor to distract myself, her words yesterday made me feel so much more devastated than I would've ever imagined, I hurt her and that hurts me. I am 100% certainly going to talk to her again, I just want to feel true love by then. I've kind of lost both of them at this point, I'm seriously confused and not sure what to do, or how to recognize what I'm feeling.