Chapter 15: Chapter 15: My Favorite Day V.

I held his shirt with two fingers, looking into his eyes. "I’m not a girl — I don’t want to stop yet." I touched my lips, while opening my eyes, returning to the white walls. "He was the one who gave me my first kiss. No longer on the forehead or the cheek. He claimed my lips, staining them with his color, making me more his."

She stopped writing, swallowing with a much redder face. "Miss Moore," she said finally, removing her white coat. "Forgive the intrusion, but would you tell me how you felt?"

My eyes opened wider than I knew they could, while a smile drew itself across my face.

"Have you ever waited a long time for something?" I began, with a question. "Like the episode of your favorite series, or a declaration of love?"

She didn’t answer. Psychologists don’t answer personal questions — they always maintain that tediously legal professionalism.

"It doesn’t matter," I continued. "It’s obvious you’ve felt that need. It’s a very human feeling..."

"Miss Moore, my question concerns how you perceive it," she interrupted. "How your eyes saw it and how your words can convey it to me."

"The answer is known by many as need, but I prefer the name Amazon," I inhaled, catching her fruity perfume — so discreet and clean it didn’t break through her professional layer. "I remember it very well; in Norway I used to order a lot of things online. It was a good way to brighten my day — spend and receive — until I realized consumerism wasn’t for me."

"Get to the point, Miss Moore."

"Those platforms used to be crueler. They didn’t have a tracker telling you when your package would arrive," I remembered, looking at the window. "You’d spend the whole day watching the window, waiting for a car to stop and someone to step out with a box." I let out a laugh. "There was nothing better than counting two or five days to receive what you wanted — knowing it would come, but not when. That’s what really makes you think about a person."

Have you ever felt that?

She touched her neck — surely feeling the itch. "I wouldn’t know how to give an example."

I watched her. I noticed things in her that had never mattered to me in any other psychologist. It was my moment to play with that. "Mrs. Roy," I began, getting up from the couch. "Would you lend me your hand?"

She hesitated for a second, but gave it to me. That was a good sign, so I returned her kindness, taking it with the care it deserved. "You have a wedding ring," I remarked, sliding a finger over it. "An incomparable declaration of love — something I think every woman who hasn’t received one would envy."

I turned her hand over, sliding my finger along all the lines of her palm.

TunTun. I could hear it, smiling. "Forgive me for the delay, but what is your real name, Mrs. Roy?"

"My name?" she questioned, reflexively moving the hand I was holding. "My name is Hirise — you’re the first patient who’s ever asked me."

"Hirise Roy. A beautiful name — don’t let anyone tell you otherwise," I smiled. "Tell me, Hirise — how many years of courtship did you wait for that moment, before your husband granted it to you?"

She looked down, surely feeling how I was stroking that finger. "Four or five years."

"Four or five years," I repeated, opening my eyes. "Then you’re one of the people who will understand me most. Since you lived it."

"Understand you how, Miss Moore?"

"Understand me," I repeated. "Few people can, and those who manage it open their eyes wider. So tell me — how did you feel...?" I paused for a second, watching the interest reflected in her eyes — every gleam in them was the confirmation of my point.

"How did it feel to watch him kneel beneath that evening light?" gleam. "Pulling from his pocket a small blue box, while saying your name." gleam gleam. "And telling you in the most beautiful and sweet voice: ’Will you marry me?’"

She didn’t know how to answer — perhaps surprised by the precision of my fantasy of a perfect proposal.

"I—" she swallowed. "I don’t know how to explain it — it was just a moment..."

"Magical," I squeezed her hand, letting her drop the pen. "Like watching a leprechaun counting the coins from his pot." I laughed a little, without taking my eyes from her gleam. I placed her hand on my small chest, right over my heart. "Hirise, feel my heartbeat," I told her, letting her know my sincerity. "Feel how fast and full it is."

"Miss Moore," she pulled free from my grip. "What are you getting at? You’ve strayed very far from my question."

"I never strayed," I answered, taking one more step forward. "I didn’t just want you to imagine it — I wanted you to relive it. You and I are more similar than you’re willing to admit." I placed my hand on her chest. "I can feel how fast your heart is too. I know you — I know that before being a doctor, you’re human, and I, before being a patient, am human too." I took her hand again. "Feel my heartbeat, Hirise — my heartbeat is like yours. I’m human and I feel real things, just like you." A tear slid down my cheek right on cue, falling onto her forearm. "Feel them — feel that I also have..."

She saw it: she saw the tear, she saw my reaction, she saw my sincerity. But above all, she felt it. "A heart that beats and is moved like everyone else’s."

"A heart that races for those special moments, like everyone else’s," I let go, returning to my seat. "Does that answer your question, Hirise? About what I felt."

She nodded, her hand still trembling, unable to lower it.

"Now we understand each other a little better, Dr. Roy," I said, returning to my seat. "Not only verbally — physically, mentally, emotionally, and magically too."

She lowered her hand, placing it over her heart — exactly the same place I had marked with my presence. She wrote something in her notebook, something happy, because she was still feeling her own heartbeat.

"Do you think love always has to move forward?" she asked, and there was something different in her tone. Something less Dr. Roy and more Hirise Roy.

I looked at her, with an even wider smile.

"Are you asking me as yourself, or are you asking me from the manual?" I wanted to confirm.

She blinked once. Then she set the pen on the notebook, lacing her fingers together.

"I’m asking as myself."

I leaned back a little further on the couch, crossing my ankles with the calm of someone who has just won something without having fought for it.

"Love that doesn’t move forward rots," I declared. "Not all at once — slowly. Like a plant no one waters. It doesn’t die right away; it just withers until someone decides it deserves water."

"And what if moving forward is frightening?"

"Everything that matters is frightening," I answered. "The things that don’t frighten us are because they don’t matter enough — like the desire to receive your package."

Silence. 𝚏𝕣𝕖𝚎𝚠𝚎𝚋𝚗𝐨𝐯𝕖𝕝.𝕔𝐨𝕞

She picked up her pen again. She returned to the protocol. But in the second before she did — in that precise instant when her hand reached for the notebook — I saw something in her gaze that I recognized.

It wasn’t exactly sadness.

It was the specific color of someone who has also waited a long time for something. And who still remembers it.

"Shall we continue?" she asked.

"Of course — just let me remember where we left off," I touched my heart. "And what I was feeling. In the third and final part of the date, when we went to his place."