A male BFF

I have a male best friend. We became best friends because I met him through a former bestie of mine (me and that former bestie are no longer friends) and they used to date, kinda. My male BFF lives in the south and when I temporarily lived in the south he helped me out a lot by; taking me grocery shopping (I did not have a car), cooking for me, staying at his house on weekends, doing my laundry at his house, taking me to his buddy’s cookouts, etc. From that point on our friendship grew extra tight. I started calling him a LOT so he could give me relationship advice about all the knuckleheads I was dating. In fact, I still call him for random advice. He knows everything about me from my best to my worst! He’s college educated, tall, handsome, employed with a 401(K), good credit, no kids, and a homeowner. Sounds good on paper, right? We have lightly talked about how male/female friendships are difficult because someone may be attracted or develop romantic feelings for the other person. In reality, can you be best friends with the opposite sex if you’ve met them after the age of 25? I can understand if you’ve been friends since childhood, but if you’ve met in adulthood, then can true friendship exist without any of the romantic intentions? Or eventually will someone think or feel something outside those friendship boundaries? Last night I called my male BFF and asked him if he loved me (not in a romantic way but as a friend) and mind you, my male BFF is NOT a expressive man, in fact, he’s kind of emotionless. He told me, “Yes Bushy, I love you.” I was actually shocked he answered my question (lol) because we’ve been friends for 8 years and he rarely verbally expresses any kind of sentimental emotions. However, his actions do show he cares about me because I call him all hours of the night with a 3 hour time difference between us and he almost always answers my phone calls. He'll listen to me cuss, cry, vent, and blabber. Sometimes I talk about girl stuff and I wonder why he'll stay on the phone with me for as long as he does because he's a dude, and dudes don't normally do this, especially guys like him. I think we’ve both thought at some point “what if” we both crossed the line? Would our friendship be the same? Of course not, because once those lines have been crossed, then that door will always be open. I can’t imagine losing our friendship. I don’t want to put our friendship in jeopardy by doing/saying something that will make it awkward.