My best guy friend told me he has feelings for me and now everything is weird

Me and my best friend have been close for almost two years. We talk every day, hang out all the time, our friend group overlaps completely. He's one of my favorite people and I genuinely never saw this coming. Three weeks ago he told me he had feelings for me. Over text first and then in person the next day. I told him as kindly as I could that I didn't feel the same way and that I didn't want to lose the friendship. He said he understood. That nothing had to change. Everything changed. He's not mean about it but something shifted and we both feel it. Conversations that used to be effortless now have this thing underneath them. Our mutual friends have started noticing and asking questions I don't know how to answer. I started thinking about what I actually wanted from the situation. I wanted the friendship back but I also didn't know if that was fair to him. Every time I reached out to try to make things normal I wondered if I was making it harder for him to move on. I also thought about whether the friendship could actually survive this or whether hoping it could was just me being unwilling to accept that something had permanently changed. I realized I'd been so focused on getting back to normal that I hadn't actually checked in with him about where he was at. I'd been managing the situation from my side without ever asking him directly what he needed. The awkwardness had become something we were both tiptoeing around instead of something either of us had actually addressed since that first conversation. We agreed the best next step was to have one honest conversation with him directly. Not about the feelings, that part was said. But about the friendship and what it looked like going forward. To tell him I missed him and that I wanted to find a way back to what we had if that was something he actually wanted too. Not to force it, not to pretend the awkwardness wasn't there, just to name it and give him the chance to tell me honestly where he was at. I wasn't going in expecting everything to go back to exactly how it was. I just knew that tiptoeing around it indefinitely wasn't working for either of us.