Life and it's curve balls...

Don't you just love life when you're going along, thinking everything is fine and dandy and then it throws you for a curve ball and you have no idea how you got there or what to do about it...
It just so happens that I received one just last week. I had been going along this past semester, enjoying school and new friends. One friend, in particular, I felt that we were developing a great friendship and that it was coming right along. I felt like 'they' were encouraging the friendship and how we treated one another and were enjoying being friends as much as I was.
During the week leading up to finals everything was a little stressful and both my friend and I were spending many hours on campus. It also just so happened that the classrooms I was in were also the classrooms that they were often in. I will admit though there were several times when I ventured to be around this friend. I got the impression that they didn't mind having me around and I enjoyed watching them work on their school projects. It was my impression that I could learn from them by watching them work.
So now to the curve ball. The week of finals I didn't see or hear from this friend. I knew they were busy with finals so I just wished them luck through a text and figured that I would talk to them after finals were said and done. Well, one night I was sitting on Facebook and this friend started chatting with me. They said that there was something they wanted to talk to me about. I figured they wanted to do something after finals or they needed my help with something. Boy, was I ever wrong!!
They told me that I was invading their space and that I was suffocating them. That the friendship had progress way too fast for them and that it made them uncomfortable. I totally was blown away and had no idea this was how they had been feeling. I, of course, felt terrible that this was how they felt about our friendship, because that was not the vibe or impression I had been getting from them the whole semester. I wasn't sure what to say, so I apologized that things had made them uncomfortable and that I would try and give them all the space they needed. Since then we have not interacted.
Now, I'm still pretty much at a lose at what happened. Maybe I'm just a moron and totally misread everything. Or maybe everything was fine and one day I did something that they didn't like. I will easily admit that I did act like their shadow on occasion, but only after they told me that they enjoyed hanging out for the whole day. And maybe that meant JUST for that day and none afterwards, so I suppose that could be my fault, but I'm still confused at WHEN things went wrong... Did things go wrong at the beginning, the middle, or at the end? I honestly felt that during the semester, they were furthering the friendship as much as I was. So, what happened? Were they just enduring the whole semester and hating every minute of it and just faking it for my sake because I was lonely and needed a friend, or is there more to the story? I don't know and it kind of is stressing me out. I never intended to make things bad in the friendship but maybe I did without even knowing it. Maybe I wasn't paying enough attention to all the signs or maybe I, simply, just messed up. I don't know. I know my social skills are not that great, but I didn't think that they were THAT horrible...
So, I do not know what is in store for this friendship. I do hope that things can be fixed and it goes right this time. But, I honestly, don't know how I should act the next time we meet. I don't want to suffocate them again, but I don't want to keep too much distance that they don't think I want to be friends anymore. So, it's easy to say, well do the middle then, but I'm not sure what the middle is when it comes to us.

So, there is my curve ball. Probably sounds like nothing to anyone else. I, however, have never liked being on any one's bad side or cause waves for anyone. So when I feel like I have, then there is a problem. It is my problem, this is true. And since I haven't talked it out with anyone I needed to get it off my chest... I fear only time will provide an answer and I worry what that answer might be.