Dealing with a co-worker?

I now have a sorta new problem. There's this co-worker I have (let's call him Bob) that lately has had me dealing with internal ranting/babble for a bit and I'm wondering what I should do about it.

I started my first job about 3 months ago and on one of my first few days I needed a trainer to learn how to use a register and he ended up being my trainer for one of those days. Everything seemed sorta, idk, at least decent with us when we first met. We didn't talk much but did have the casual small talk here and there that day.

Now since that day we've barely spoken maybe 3 sentences to each other. Yesterday was the first day we've spoken in weeks/months and that was only because it concerned the work area. Ever since that first day I've been getting this weird feeling as if he's avoiding me. Examples of this would be how if I happen to walk over while waiting for a customer and there's the normal group of cashiers talking, he'll either stop talking or immediately leave. Or if say he walks over and there's already a few of us crowded around he'll initiate a conversation with anyone except for me. He'll even go as far as to avoid the lunch room if he knows I'm there. It doesn't bother me in the sense of hurt feelings, but more so I'm just curious as to what I could've done to cause it.

For a while I thought maybe it was because just about everyone at work knows I'm gay and maybe he just wasn't comfortable with it. I held onto that thought until last week when I found out he's gay as well. My friends and I were talking about it and they came to the conclusion that perhaps he likes me and I make him nervous or something, which I doubt since he's comfortable even speaking to other people with me standing there as well.

Now my other suspicion is one that I hope is wrong. Long story short: there was a guy about a year and a half ago who happened to be black that messaged me on and online site I used to use for dating and asked me if I'd have sex with him. I turned him down and he told all his friends (which literally seems to be like 80% of all the gay guys in this area that use anything online) that I said no because I'm racist against black people. Yet I'm half black myself and have no kind of racial hangups, I just didn't want sex. Well his friends believed him of course though without ever speaking to me and since that day I've had to deal with no even really being able to strike up a conversation online with people since just about every time I end up getting told they've "heard I'm racist" which is one of many reasons I'm glad to be moving far away from here in a few weeks.

That leads me to my second possibility of him maybe being one of that group and having some kind of prejudged image of me. I've considered confronting him on it in a friendly manner like just asking was there something wrong since I can't think of anything besides these two reasons but I'm also nervous/cautious about doing this in case it doesn't end well. Any feedback on what I should do about this?

 

I'm not even sure how to begin to ask him what's going on though. Messaging him on Facebook seems like it'd be easiest but it also seems like a cheap way out of things yet trying to talk to him in person seems near impossible since there's always other employees around us.

 

None that I could possibly think of. Most times we're usually on a register at the same time working. Or when I'm coming in for work he's leaving to go home.