It always started the same.

“Please… just five minutes. Let me see you for five minutes.”

He swore it would be only five. But somehow, five always turned into fifteen. And even then, it never felt like enough.

He would watch her with sleepy eyes and say, every single time, like it was brand new:

“You’re beautiful. Again.”

And somehow, with him, she was. She really was.

For him, mornings weren’t her enemy. She’d leap — well, semi-leap — out of her warm cocoon of blankets, shove her feet into fluffy slippers, and launch herself toward the phone like a caffeinated raccoon, just to see what he’d written that morning, to see his every single day “good morning, my love”.

He always wrote. He always was there. Even when he wasn’t.  Nights? She was almost never alone. Not really. She knew the moment she closed her eyes, he was there, whispering nonsense and sweet nothings into the dark of her thoughts.

“Love, the bed is kind of empty without you,” he’d text as she stood in her own bed-shaped crater, still warm from sleep. And oh, his bed — soft, too soft, like a trap — in that dark, cave-like room that smelled like comfort and skin and some overly ambitious men’s perfume.

His arms always wrapped perfectly around her. His lips, scandalously active at 6:02 AM, would shower her shoulders with kisses while she grumbled and purred in protest, already addicted to the day. The scent of clean towels. The trickle of water in the shower. And, most adorably, his habit of kissing her barely-awake toes before rushing off to whatever important things men with broad shoulders do.

“Just one more minute. I’m almost awake… I swear…” she’d whisper, negotiating with reality.

Between two meetings, stuck in godforsaken traffic, she’d catch herself smiling at the clouds like a madwoman. Her friend, ever the Greek chorus of practicality, would tease: “You’re such a dreamer.”

And maybe she was.

But what could she do when he wanted boiled eggs and cheese, and peanut butter at breakfast all at once? Not to mention her, casually wedged somewhere between the boiled eggs and peanut butter.

“And I am going to make my famous Caesar salad,” he’d say. “Updated. The kind that makes your eyes water just smelling it. I’ll make it today, okay?”

She laughed. She always laughed.

Because in her dreams, he was all hers. And in those dreams, they always had five more minutes. Fifteen. Twenty. Whole mornings of tangled hair, sleepy murmurs, and cappuccinos on his favorite mug.

She never needed a visa to love him.

But she would’ve applied for a thousand if that’s what it took.