Our Journey began four years ago. It was a rocky road, one he once called a rollercoaster, which I think truly sums it up well. We got on the colorful ride one day just on the cusp of summer, when we both arrived at boarding school. It was hot and humid and our freshmen orientation group of nine was supposed to go and explore the nearby area. When we had gone our separate ways, I started walking up one of the larger streets. It was lined on both sides with colorful stores advertising things such as 40% off shoes and buy one get one free bras. There were also two different bars on the street, which for a college town, did not surprise me. I was too busy checking to see if any of the signs mentioned selling men’s clothing to watch where I was walking and walked straight into someone with a small figure.

“I’m so sorry!” I said as I recovered from my blow.
I looked up, surprised to see another one of the students from the school.
“That’s fine,” he said, smiling shyly at me.

We both stood there awkwardly in silence. I took in his image for the first time. He was so small, well the same size as me, which was tiny. I think we were both fourteen at the time. He had shoulder length brown hair that partially covered his blue eyes. He was wearing an obviously self-made tye-dye tee shirt and some beige cargo shorts. He looked pretty timid but kind of in an adorable way. We exchanged names and than after about thirty-seconds of silence, I looked up the street a little ways to see a Coldstone. I decided I would go out on a limb.
“Want to go get some ice cream?” I asked, pointing up the street to the store.

“Sure,” he said immediately. I could tell he was just excited that he didn’t have to ask.
We walked up the street and entered the ice cream shop. As we got in line I asked him what he was going to order.

“I really like their mango ice cream,” he said.
“Really, I didn’t know they offered that,” I responded trying to be as open and friendly as possible.
“It’s organic and they keep it in the back. You have to ask for it or else they don’t offer it,” he said, a flicker of a real smile coming across his face.
“How do you know that?” I asked him, impressed.
“My oldest brother works at a Coldstone back home,” he replied.

“Well then it looks like I picked the right person to come here with,” I said smiling at him.

We ordered two mango ice cream cones, and then waited for them to scoop up our order. After paying, we sat down at the empty red table closest to the doors of the restaurant. I started eating my ice cream slowly, savoring the fruity flavoring. He looked at me anxiously to see if I liked it. His eyebrows were slightly furrowed as if trying to read my expression and figure out my opinion without actually having to ask me.

I decided to help him out by saying “Wow! This is really good.”
“I’m glad you like it, I really like mango. I used to get dried mangos back at home,” He said.
“That sounds tasty too,” I replied.

There was a lull for a moment where I looked up to see in the different menu options including “s’mores” and “hot for cookie.” He stared at me for a moment, not saying anything. His fingers tapped nervously on the metal table that our arms were resting on. I looked back to him and he quickly averted his gaze back to the table.
“I like your shirt,” I sad as I looked at his tye-dyed blue tee shirt. The pattern that he had created made it the colors look like ocean waves, and it brought out his brilliant blue eyes.

“Thanks, I made it last year,” he said looking down at it.
“Have you ever tye-dyed? It is really easy. All you have to do is wrap rubber bands around a shirt, and then find a bucket and fill it with colored dye, or you can make your own. Someday I want to learn how to make my own, but for now I think I am going to stick with the dyes. Anyway, you stick the shirt in the dyes, if you want more than one color, I liked the blue the best, so I did different shades of blue. Anyway, so you squirt the different colors onto the different rubber band parts and then you wait for it to dry and it looks like this,” He said this so quickly and nervously that he stumbled over his words.

I looked him in the eyes the whole time he was speaking and was astonished at how long he went on. I had tye-dyed before. My eyebrows were raised and he looked mortified. He then burst out into a nervous laugh. He decided that he should stop talking and instead turned his attention to the melting ice cream cone in his hand.
“That sounds like fun, I like the color blue a lot too,” I said laughing myself.

He grinned at me. The ice cream had left a small trail of orange liquid running down his mouth. He reached a hand up to wipe it away, but just smeared it around more. I handed him a napkin and he used it before throwing it down on the table.

“So, what about you? What do you like to do?” He asked.
“Oh, I’m pretty boring, I really like school work,” I said.
“Really, so are you like ridiculously smart?” He asked, looking a little worried that he was out of his league.
“No, not super smart, just a hard worker,” I said laughing.
“Oh good, I like hard workers. Do you have any hobbies?” He asked.
“Oh, I don’t know. I’m kind of in between hobbies right now. I like playing card games a lot though,” I said, brushing my hair back behind my ear.
“Really, my family loves to play cards,” he said excitedly.
“Well then we will have to play sometime,” I said, which was bolder then I had planned on being.
“Your on,” he said.
He paused before saying “you’re really cool, you know that?”
My eyes widened for a moment and I laughed a little bit. I had been called many things over the course of my lifetime, but cool was not one of them.
“Thank you, you seem pretty cool yourself,” I said smiling.
The timer on his watch went off and we both looked down to his wrist.
“I set that so I would know when to head back,” he said.
“Well then we should probably go,” I said, reaching out for his empty ice cream cone.

I threw them away and we started walking back towards where we were supposed to meet. We made pleasant conversation and he told be about his life at home. I had been so worried about making friends at my new school, and then I just ran into one. It seemed too good to be true. A lot has happened since that fateful day, but looking back on it, the day I first fell in love was sitting at that table, eating mango ice cream and laughing with him at Coldstone.