He said he was having problems with his girlfriend?

There’s a guy in one of my college classes. He speaks his opinion. He’s very outspoken. We sit in a giant circle in class and he sits kind of like diagonal from me. every time he raises his hand and starts speaking he’ll glance at the professor and then make dead eye contact with me while talking. it’s hard not to smile when he’s looking at me while talking. He constantly makes eye contact with me while talking which obviously means he doesn’t find me hard to look at lol. I was kinda playing around with another guy in the class because we were working in partners and the teacher asked us what we were doing and the guy just said we were just figuring something out and I saw the guy I’m interested in look over at us and stare at me.
I’ve been told pretty lol which I know doesn’t automatically make him interested.
I decided to speak out on some injustice topics and we kind of had a discussion going on and he agreed with me and added on to what I was saying with some issues that happened to his friend. He kept glancing at the professor and back at me again but was beet red while he was talking but still spoke to me with no problem.
We also had a conversation about a movie and a short story we read and he explained it to me. After class I saw him go near the professor and he said loudly to him that this was one of his favorite classes and he just wanted to say it. He never rlly talks to me after class. Today was good. He sat near me in class and looked at me and said how it was nice to be having a break and watching a movie. I agreed and It got quiet and I said I was gonna go call this guy I’m dating. Also I said some stuff about a class and he joined in and said how his girlfriend was at a a college a few hours away and he’s not doing well Bc it’s extremely hard to do long distance and it’s causing problems. Which I thought was weird because he’s never mentioned a girlfriend before. Why’d he say this?