Please Help Me. I like this guy...READ ON..

I like this guy who I've known for 4 years and we've been friends the whole time. A couple years ago I started to have feelings for him(<3!!!!). My friends kept on saying that either A, I've lost my mind, or B, to just do it. It's been a year now since we last saw each other and I still love him. We both now go to public school(which any public school was bigger than ours since it only had 25 kids in it from Pre-K to 12th grade). My new friends now are saying to just ask him out already, but I'm way to shy to ask him. So in general what I'm trying to say is, Should I ask him and take the risk of potentially destroying our friendship?