Blueberry suits him the best. So does butterscotch and mint. And every other flavour too.

Ice cream was the one in the longest time that caught my eye, for a relatively longer period. I was looking for someone else. He caught the attention of my bored eyes. Not his fault. Neither was mine. He was the depiction of every perfection I ever wanted, in myself. He had the ideal appearance I had craved to have for ages. Call it a repressed wish fulfilment cause that's what my first thought towards him was. My ideal type.

In a crowd of hundreds, my eyes landed and stayed on him. This couldn't be a coincidence. There are no coincidences. It's all a play of the fate.

The first time I saw him in a faded purple shirt. Our next encounter ended up with me asking him a formal question and him answering me. That's the day I named him.

Icecream.

It's a hobby of mine to nickname people. Be it a friend or a foe, or someone whose name I don't know. He ate ice cream all the time I ever spotted him. So the name. Amazingly, his real name turned out to be a synonym of ice itself.

My feelings and thoughts were all a blur, chaotically jumping here and there. When things aren't cool, fooling around is what I do best. Watching people is one such personal technique of fooling around. I watch them, observe them, and look for the emotions their eyes hold. This hobby is a lite version of my childhood wish to become a secret agent. How silly our childhood dreams can get, right?

One such observation bared my intentions to him. I was leaving. He was arriving. My eyes were searching for him, his met mine. I dared to not fall prey to my conscience and kept staring into his black-brownish orbs.

For the first time, my shameless behaviour proved fruitful in revealing how cute a guy can look while shying away to protect his dignity. That's when I decided to keep the staring game going. The reward was worth it.

The game elongated with an added audience or co-player maybe. A friend of mine came to meet me. After a thousand requests and a few failed attempts, she got to see the distant image of the guy who'd kept me hooked for so long. And the best part was, she took an interest in him. Don't get me wrong but passive flirting and staring game is always better when you have a partner to play alongside.

Now, the clarification is that I don't love ice cream. As much as I had observed, he has someone else in his life. An anonymous person I had decided to address as "softea". That person must be very lucky to have the undivided attention of this beloved being.

How can I be so sure? Well, I have my instincts that never lie. There was a time when I used to continue the staring game indirectly, careful enough to not get detected by my target. But once a fortunate evening, my idiot heart decided it was futile to hide any longer. So I kept staring at ice cream without batting an eyelash for as long as he was within my visual periphery. That's when our eyes collided and he shied away, most probably protecting his untarnished dignity.

From that day onwards, he would try his best to avoid my winkless gaze. It started out as a crush but turned into a challenge. The intrinsic satisfaction I received every time a perfectly built boy like him shied away bothered by my eyes only boosted my ego further. Only if he knew.

And his voice. Oh god. His voice induced all kinds of butterflies inside my stomach to begin an unannounced fire drill. He had that effect on me. Even my dreams were corrupted by his features eventually. In the first dream, he initiated a conversation with me out of nowhere rendering me speechless. Only if that dream were to come true. But I know better. Some dreams are better left unfulfilled. Some conversations are better left uninitiated. Some people are better left unmet.