I need some advice before I go crazy.

I posted this in another relevant subreddit last night and got a couple great responses, but this is still bothering me a lot, so I was hoping some kind souls here might be able to help a brother out here.So, I've always felt kind of silly about asking for relationship advice on the internet, but I could honestly use some input from someone who might have had experience in my position at some point. Or anyone for that matter. I just need another voice in the matter.Long story short, I moved in with my parents for the spring/summer before starting school this fall, and they live in a pretty small, conservative town. I'm still very newly out and pretty unfamiliar with the gay dating scene, but I downloaded Grindr for shits and giggles. I probably would have had better selection in the middle of the ocean to be completely honest. Fast forward a couple months and I get a random message from a guy my age who seems pretty intelligent, and we share lots of interests. He's even planning on going to the same school as me. Cool, we hit it off. We start texting pretty regularly, and when we finally meet up to hang out for the first time, it's fucking amazing. We laugh at the same shit, we have a lot of the same hobbies and passions, and the communication just comes super naturally which is pretty huge for me. I'm ecstatic that I might have actually met someone worth my time in this shithole of a town.So, we keep hanging out and it's just getting better. We're staying out until the early hours of the morning, going swimming and just talking about who knows what. I'm usually pretty resistant to falling for people, but I could definitely feel it coming on, and I was kind of okay with it for once in my life. He makes the first move a lot, which is great because I'm too shy for my own good. We make out and get touchy feely, but we're both huge teases, which just made the slow progression into the intimate shit that much more amazing.Then, after a week of hanging out almost every night, he starts texting less and we stop hanging out altogether. I'm not one to want to appear clingy, so I don't really say anything and kind of just hope that he's just busy with life and things will get back to the way they were when it blows over. Only, it doesn't, it just gets worse. Finally, I reluctantly bring up how I'm feeling about how distant he is, and he tells me that he has been busy, but the main reason was that the feelings that he's developed for me have become stronger than he's used to and he doesn't really know how to deal with them, and he's just overthinking everything, including when to text me and all that shit. So he's kind of nervous to hang out because he doesn't want to mess it up. I get it, I can be exactly the same way, but I assume that after we have this conversation, he'll be more open about it and we'll have a shot at getting back on track. You guessed it: nope. It gets to the point where we haven't hung out in almost two weeks, and he's told me that he wants to hang out for three nights in a row, but when it finally gets down to it, he makes up an excuse for why it won't work out and says that we can the next night. I'm usually a pretty chill guy, but I'm not cool with people wasting my time, so I'm less worried now and more pissed. After the third or fourth night of flaking in a row, I just tell him that I'm done. He responds with "okay." And that was that. I didn't text him again for four days, hoping he would at least send a message apologizing or something, but he sends me nothing.On the fifth day (or somewhere around there) of not talking, I finally just text him and ask him if he's lost interest already. He tells me that he hasn't at all, actually the opposite, that he was sorry for being an asshole, and that he was really glad that I texted him. Oh, and that he had flown across the fucking country to his dad's house because he just needed to "get away from it all" for awhile and that he'd "probably be back." Yikes. We have a pretty extensive conversation that night about how he needed to take a step back from life and that he was thinking about dropping out of school to go travel. I just told him to not string me along, and let me know how he's feeling and what he decides to do so I don't continue to waste my time. He said that he would. It was a pretty fucking weird conversation and he seemed totally different. But whatever, we eventually say goodnight and I assume we'll start talking again.I don't text him back the next day, hoping he'd at least take the initiative to start a conversation with me, but he doesn't. Days go by, I still hear nothing. Here we are, eight days since that night, and he still hasn't texted me. I'm kind of at a loss for words. I'm just so confused how we can go from having something with so much potential to having nothing at all in a matter of days. I've convinced myself not to text him first again, because if he really cared, he would reach out to me. However, I can't stop thinking about the conversation that we had and how weird it was. At this point, I'm trying to get myself to just moved on, but he had a much bigger impact on me than I initially thought he did, and this past week of not talking has been been hell at times. The biggest problem is just not knowing. I don't know if he was just lying about how he felt and he actually couldn't give less of a shit about me, or if he does care a lot and me not texting him for four days drove him to leave the state on a whim. I just don't know and it's driving me crazy.Ultimately, I kind of just regret the whole thing and just want to move on with my life, but I don't know how. I can't get myself to text him again and ask him for an update, but I also can't get myself to delete his number either. I re-downloaded Grindr and Tinder and have tried talking to other guys just to get my mind off of him, but nobody even comes close to comparing and I think it's just made it worse. To be completely honest though, if he did text me again tonight, I'd forgive the asshole in a heartbeat. It sucks, but I've never felt this way toward someone before, and I just crave that closeness again. I know there are other fish in the sea and all that bullshit, but I hate not having closure, and I know that this will haunt me for a long time if we never talk again.So, this is where I need help. What do I do? Should I text him? Delete his number? Wait it out? I've played over every scenario in my head, and I'm honestly at a loss. I hate feeling like this and I just want this constant vague anxiety to go away. I know the easiest answer is to just move on, but I'd give almost anything just to hang out with him again. I feel like such a loser.I know this was more of a long story long, and I feel super clingy and weird for writing about it because I'm not usually like this at all, but thanks to everyone who decided to read this and respond. It means a lot.