Can Casual Sexting Turn into a Real Relationship

So last year I went to Cancun and met this guy at a party. He was from Montréal and we spoke to each other in French and hit it off pretty quickly. We left the club together with intentions to fool around but my hotel didn’t allow guests after 10PM. His hotel was about a twenty minute walk away so we started walking to his, but on the way there I had to pee so I found a bush and peed in the street. Out of nowhere four policemen come out and tell me they need to arrest me unless I pay them 300$. Long story short, after ten minutes of futilely trying to convince the policemen to let me go, they push me into their police van and the Canadian, who’d been watching pretty quietly from the background, finally had enough and paid the policemen off (like 50$).

We were both pretty high on life after the whole situation, laughing and reminiscing about what had transpired just minutes before, and when we tried to go into his hotel, they too wouldn’t allow guests after 10PM, but instead of going upstairs to his room, he walked me all the way back home.

We didn’t see each other in Mexico again but we exchanged numbers.

Fast forward three months later, I’m in Montréal with my friends, and the minute I cross the border I message him “Guess who’s in Montréal”. He messages back pretty quickly, surprised that he’s hearing from me again after so long. We hang out twice during the four days I’m in Canada. We never sleep together.

I left Montreal but we continued to talk. Our conversations were always fun, but we didn’t talk often and he never initiated contact, I always did. Our conversations became sexual, we would send each other pictures of ourselves but it was never too graphic, just playful, sexy.

Fast forward to November, we are texting almost every day. I like him and I’ve told him so. We know a lot about each other. We sext from time to time. Then one day he tells me “Hey, I can’t send you sexy snapchats anymore”. When I ask why he says he just got a girlfriend. In my mind I’m like….we were sexting each other juust last week. I definitely felt weird about the whole thing, but not heart broken. I chalked it up to just: he didn’t take me seriously and the distance between us made me not even an option for him.

I still sent him a very thoughtful “thank you for saving me from a Mexican Jail” gift for his birthday the next month. He said it was the best gift he’d gotten that year and thanked me. I said Happy Birthday, told him how much I appreciated him, and then that was the last message I sent.

Fast forward three months later, he messages me, saying he broke up with his ex, telling me how terrible she was. He doesn’t sound heartbroken. I told him I was “talking” to someone. He asked me “what does ‘talking’ mean, and a lot of questions about the guy I was seeing – even asked to see a picture and asked me what were my plans with this new guy. The other day he sent me a text message saying, “I just want you to know that I’m happy I met you.” I respond to all his texts with the same enthusiasm, but I never text first.

Given that the relationship we had before was basically sexting each other and me hitting him up from time to time (never the other way around), should I take this sudden interest in my life seriously? Is he just trying to get to that sexting stage again or do you guys think he might want to try something real with me? Or I should just chalk it up to him just getting back in touch with a friend?