Ghosted by someone I was starting to like (I think)

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I have not been in a romantic relationship for quite a while now but I have had guys flirt with me from time to time. Some, I flirted back with while others, I just interacted with casually so as to not give any mixed signals. I previously worked as a supervisor in my last corporate job and one of my young male subordinates kept in touch with me. I was with the company for five years and most of my colleagues, I have treated as family, if not really close friends. Every now and then he would ask for us to meet and being someone who was placed on the hot seat before at our previous job with younger colleagues too, I always kept it a trio whenever we meet. We meet with another close friend of ours. So it went on for months every once in a while we all three meet up to have lunch or dinner and coffee and talk about recent things happening to us. Just this April he started asking for help with something that would require us to meet up more frequently and we did for several weekends the whole of May of this year, 2023. This is where all the mixed signals started flooding in. I, being older, decided to just shove things away and ignore it since I thought that it could just be a generation gap or something that I might be misunderstanding and decided not to entertain the signals unless he confirms anything. After we spent a night with some friends in a different city and he drove me back home the next day, things changed drastically. He wanted to pick up something 2 days after from my home but I thought it will be an energy saver if I will just have it delivered to his home. He did not want to so I decided to have it sent to his friend that he reasoned out he will be visiting too after coming here as he lives near our area. The next day, I had his things sent to his friend's home but he did not pick them up. His friend took it at work as it is nearer his place but he still did not pick it up until the day after. This happened with us not talking to each other anymore. I sent him a message to ask and confirm if he got it as I also included some frozen food for him to stock up. He confirmed he got it but his messages sounded too cold. So I let him be and just reacted with his confirmation text. The next thing you know, he started to restrict me and will not answer my messages or calls. I tried to reach out several times in several ways but heard nothing back. A few days passed by and I was feeling okay but he started to delete himself from our subscription which prompted a notif to my email. So with all of that, my friends all got hyped up in giving advice saying he must have been irked with me as he might have sensed that I was starting to like him more romantically. I have thought about it and at that time it happened, I was not even close to thinking I could have something more with him. I was only going with the flow. Of course, it hurt me when he all of a sudden just ghosted me instead of saying something after I reached out but what is done is done. After a week, he sent me a message asking for some of his things back by the 2nd week of July but by this time, I was the one who is not in the mood for talking and just sent a thumbs up to acknowledge it. Could my friends be right about what happened? I am not sure but one thing I know is I know how I am for him with how he treated me and how I never wanted to be treated that way again.