Whats my next move? What to do when your both shy and in a weird situation?

Hello, its me back with another problem involving my pathetic lovelife. If you happened read my last post for whatever reason disregard it because that guy is irrelevant now lol. Anyways heres the current situation:
So I have always found this guy with mutual friends of mine very very attractive, but had never met him til very recently. He doesnt go to school with me cus he already graduated, but as mentioned before we both knew who eachother were from mutual friends. Anyways so i finally met this guy a week ago at a party and i hung out with him in the outskirts of the party most of the night. A couple of our mutual friends came by a few times and made suggestive faces, ya know like the "hmm i see whats going on here" type face. We were both kind of awkwardly shy, but our weirdness was paralleled. We had the same sense of humor and similar interests and hit it off pretty much. I also found out that the place he worked was where i had already had plans to go the following day with another group of friends, and he said he'd be working during that time. Blah blah blah...Then I had to leave rather abruptly about the same time he left to use the restroom. I said my goodbyes to the rest of my friends and kind of lingered, then i just said bye to his whole friend group as a whole besides the hugs i gave to my good friend previously. So the next day comes and i told a couple of my girls that i just met this guy and by the time we get to the place the whole group of girls knows. When we got there i exchanged a distanced wave and smile with him, and the girls all kept their eyes on him and tell me whenever he looked over towards us... which he did quite a bit honestly... like really a lot. By the time we had finished and went to the front to pay, (which he was working.. just my luck lol) he leaned over the counter and started a small conversation in which we talked for a couple minutes. He explained that his shift was about to end in a few mins, and after the convo died down he walked away. He hovered towards the back and continued to look from afar, then coincidentally his shift ended 5 minutes later while we were still in the front waiting for the bills to be sorted out, he stopped by me to say bye and talk briefly, and i told him that we'd have to try to make plans with our mutual friends all together in which he agreed.

I didnt get his number and he didnt get mine. So of course i was a little bit disheartened cus i obviously formed some interest in this guy. I talked to one of my best friends (whos friends with him, but shes closer with me) and she explained that hes really awkward and shy and wont usually initiate conversation. And that apparently him initiating conversation is a really good thing and theres a chance he might be interested. She gave me his number as well, but im shy and awkward too so like i dont know if i would have the courage to text him and what i would even say. Also wouldnt it be weird for me to text him? Its also important to mention that his best friend who is one of my friends has a very strong banter relationship with me, and he knows about my past guy drama and stuff. So im not really sure how his bestfriend/ my guy-friend would react to me having interest in this guy... that being said the shared friend was one of the suggestive friends as the party. The whole things just really weird i know. Anyways what im trying to ask here is what should i do?

Some ideas i was thinking was:
1) Just texting him.... But how would i do that without creeping him out?
2) Letting his bestfriend know becus his bestfriend has done that to me before with one of my friends: "hey ___ is pretty cute u should set that up." BUT the thing with this is how would i do that.. would i just copy what he said basically^?
3) The group plans? except MY bestfriend who i told is really fricken busy and it might take forever for her to even find a day to plan a hangout, then he might not even be able to make it. By the time we get it planned it'll be like 2 weeks from those instances up above^^^^^^^.

So yea, im interested in this guy but i just dont know where to go from here.