I cant Play with my friend on NFS heat but we are both on pc

I am trying to play with my friend. We both have it downloaded on steam and when I try to ad him as a friend on the ea app, it says friend request sent. At some point we were able to both send each other friend requests and I have him added but when we are both playing it says he is offline. I also shows up as offline for him. he shows up as online on steam but not in the actual game itself. The game says I have no friends added.