Fate
At last we've reached the second act of Alan and Ben's story, you who for some reason are still following the journey of these people who are telling you their stories here...
Well, what can I say, we're in the fall of the year in which Alan and Ben met, and as you already know, got into a relationship...
Okay, I get it, let's stop rambling and tell you what you, my dear great listeners/readers, want to see/read...
In Bestemming
Alan sleepily opens his eyes in two small slits when he feels that the left side of the bed is empty and icy. It was only when he opened his eyes that he remembered that Ben was going out in the morning, but he couldn't remember what his boyfriend was going to do.
The night Alan had proposed had been special, Benjamin had prepared a dinner for the two of them, as Jo Ann said "it was a romantic dinner worthy of romantic comedy movies, where the good guy takes the good girl to a fancy restaurant, which I'm sure costs an arm and a leg, just to impress her, as if a standard hetero couple needed to impress each other." She finished saying it as if she owned the truth.
Alan laughed as he remembered it, he couldn't think of his friend and not laugh at least once, it was natural to think of Jo Ann and laugh at her antics.
Immediately after the kidnap attempt Alan had suffered in his own home, B. hadn't accepted that he should continue to live there. Even with the arguments he found, Benjamin refuted them, saying that he wouldn't trust the love of his life to live in a place where everyone could enter.
Without any plausible arguments, Alan felt defeated. He liked living there, the neighborhood pleased him, going down to the square on a Sunday and watching patriarchal society go about its business, he liked how the illusion of the perfect family still prevailed in a country that was founded so that minorities and different ways of loving could exist.
Alan sadly got out of bed, that day would be an immeasurable challenge for him, the teacher would help B.'s employees organize a Halloween party to celebrate B.'s birthday.
As usual, Alan hadn't told Ben that he was organizing a birthday party for him, which could be a mistake, but Alan is a confidence man, and let's just say he thinks he knows his boyfriend well.
Ben had never told the professor his birthday, because he didn't like celebrating the day he was born, he thought it was just a silly thing to say. However, he didn't want to hurt his boyfriend and future husband, so he let Augusta, the housekeeper, tell Alan that his birthday was on Halloween.
Ever since that day, the teacher had been planning a party behind his back to celebrate both Halloween and his love's birthday.
Ben didn't like to celebrate his birthday because it reminded him of the death of his parents, who unfortunately died on October 31st of the year in which Benjamin turned ten.
B. got out of the car and set off the alarm. He ran across the parking lot in large, hurried strides. If anyone saw him at that moment, they would say he was running away from something, but in fact he was running towards it.
Every year he came to this place, without skipping a single year, the Angel Grove cemetery, the place where his parents, Benji and Alicia lay.
With a tremendous urge to cry, with sadness knocking at the door, Benjamin walked faster and faster, he needed to get to where his beloved parents were, there, in that place, he felt welcomed, protected, there he felt closer to his parents, and he wasn't wrong. His parents were always there, year after year, waiting for him.
As soon as he arrived where his parents were, B. knelt down and began to pray. As soon as he had finished, he sat down on the floor, he wanted to be closer to his parents.
- Mom, Dad, I have so much to tell you, my uncles betrayed us - Ben pauses, wipes his parched lips and continues - They ambushed me. I don't know what their goal was, but they didn't succeed - he says with his voice choked by the tears caught in his throat - as a result of the assassination attempt, which failed, thank God - he pauses again, as tears stream down his face - I lost my memory, I wandered the streets of Bestemming until, by fate, I met a wonderful man who helped me at a time when I was confused.
Suddenly a wind swept through the cemetery, causing all the leaves that had fallen from the trees to fly around Benjamin. He knew it was his parents speaking out about what he had said.
Still immersed in the feelings that were overtaking him, B. got up from the ground and walked past the weathered black granite headstones.
Alan was already going crazy with so many things to be sorted out in such a short space of time, that day was going to be wonderful and emblematic for both him and Ben, and nobody was going to spoil it.
Al was in the living room of the house, sitting on the sofa, arranging the decorations for the party, carving pumpkins, if you could call it a house, in his opinion it was a mansion, the living room had a 65-inch television on one of the walls, the reclining sofa was on the opposite wall to the television, making for an excellent view of the TV.
With Augusta's help, he had done almost all of the decorating in the house. All he had to do was finish the living room, which happened to be the largest room in the house.
Handily, he finished off the last remaining Halloween pumpkin and placed it on the coffee table to complete the decoration.
Alan threw himself on the sofa, tired, he hadn't even started the party, he didn't know why he invented these things, it just tired him out, and sometimes he was disappointed by the reaction of those he wanted to please.
It was always like that, he gave himself everything he could, someone always came along to put an end to his joy, and to top it off, or not so much, it was always the person Al wanted to please who disappointed him.
Even so, he did it, he insisted on it, but he believed that this time it would be different, in fact, it was always the same, he did everything he could to please and in the end he was the one who left disappointed, frustrated with everything and everyone around him.
Now, if it went to shit, just wait, because the teacher had already prepared the party and invited his friends to celebrate Ben's birthday.