He Keeps Hugging Me Goodbye

I love reading this group, and finally have something to post. Thanks in advance for your opinions on this:I met a great guy recently (in person, not through an app), and asked him out. After a couple weeks of texting, we went out to dinner. We had a perfect time, nice conversation, and the next day he texted to say thanks and suggested we hang out again. A few days later we went hiking, and made plans to hit some parties the next night. Around this time he was flirty on text (lots of emoticons, complimenting photos I posted on Instagram etc.).The third time we went out was to the parties mentioned above. We had drinks at his place first, and had our first kiss (actually our only kiss to date - hence my writing this). The parties we went to were a little crazy, we drank too much, and lost each other at the end of the night. But we caught up on text the next day and it was all good.We’ve gone out two more times, to an art thing and a concert, and had dinner on both occasions. Neither of these ended up being late nights, and when I dropped him off both times, he leaned over and gave me a hug (one time with a kiss on the cheek).To give a little more insight, I’ve almost always been the one to initiate contact and have been the one to invite him out each time. And while he’s still very responsive on text, he’s not as flirty as he was the first week we were hanging out.I generally like taking things slow, but the fact that we’ve been out five times over the last month and are still hugging goodbye has me wondering if we’re just going snail-pace slow, or if he’s doing this to show me that he wants to be just friends.The protective voice in my head wants to take this as a hint and stop pursuing this guy, just so as not to set myself up for disappointment. But the optimist in me sees the fact that he keeps accepting my invitations to spend time together as an indication of interest.And for the record - If this doesn’t work out, we will be friends. But I haven’t met anyone that I’ve been this interested in for a while, so it would be nice if it worked out to be something special.TL;DR: Been out with a guy 5 times in the last month, still hugging goodbye. Friend zone?