oh my god, THANK YOU, everyone!!!

This makes me feel so much better.
I also cannot read signals at all.

What happened this time was most definitely someone sending out those signals to me on purpose with no intention of actually following through. I didn't figure this out until after my class session was over and a bunch of my classmates and I went out on the town... and I got to see him interact with every other young woman in the group.

The things he did with me -- the small ways in which he seemed to take interest and pay special attention -- were the same things he did with all of them. So, it most definitely was a "cast a wide net" approach for him.

But it sucked, because I didn't get that I was part of the wide net until almost two months later. So, i feel like an idiot because I wasn't able to discern that I wasn't special to him.