How to sneak in my friend's team?

[bromance17]

Hi guys, i have a high-school friend which i see him nearly every week. In his work he met a very popular guy(which i think he might be gay) and he introduced him to his friends. The guy is a twink magnet. All of his friends are hot guys with nice bodies. And so my friend became member of their group. Six months ago, one night i went for a drink with my friend and we accidentally bumped into them. The popular guy was glad he finally met me and he invited us to join them. We had a very nice time. I really met everyone in the team and we had so much fun making fool of situations and discussing some political and general issues. I was very talkative to everyone. Next week my friend was out with his buddies and he invited me to meet them. I wanted to play cool and not to be desperate so i told him i cant today let's meet tommorow. The next day we met he was out not with his team but with some girls. Since then whenever i see my friend we are all alone and whenever my friend tags me on fb , the popular guy always likes the post. (Maybe he thought that i didnt like him so we didnt catch up since then). I want to socialise with the popular guy. How to sneak in this group again? I dont want to tell my friend to set this up because from my bad past experience when i tell someone to meet me with somebody else, he or she gets jealous and sabotages me so i have the opposite results.