I can appreciate your response BOM. Thank you for reflecting back, too. Honestly, what I want is to volunteer there and not focus on him anymore. I am not going to confront him to bluntly tell him this or anything probably. I did think we were more friendly than him not telling me about knowing someone very close to him in the class, but if it is privacy related I respect that and I think this is a wake up call that there is a definite imbalance of feelings, even just in a friendship sort of way. We can respect each other, but we have no friendship.
thanks again for responding.