"the love you give and the love you make"

Benjamin's mother sat on a chair in the living room. I walked over to her and kissed her hand. She smiled and asked me to sit down.

"Thank you for helping Ben and his family." Her smile was sincere, her eyes had the same twinkle in Benjamin's, only hers betray the years of hardship of bringing together a family of seven children all by herself. Her husband died when Benjamin was a young boy.

Little Daniela had just come back from playing and when she saw me, she rushed to say "Hi".

"How are you?" I said as I patted the top of her head.

"I'm good. I"m so glad you came back." She looked at her mother who quietly poured Coke on a glass with small cubes of ice. Diana ignored her.

I held out a small tin of shortbread cookies to Daniela who eyed the shiny tin happily as she let out a short gasp.

"Share with your brothers, okay?"

The two Mrs. Suarez sat on separate chairs opposite each other, the older making small talk, mostly thanking me for my help and briefly chastising the younger one for not showing more appreciation. I was about to say something when Benjamin emerged from the bedroom. He hobbled towards an unoccupied chair but Diana stood up for him to take her chair.

From the looks in her eyes, one could see that Mrs. Suarez's favorite child is Benjamin. I understood that she gave birth to Benjamin after her family converted to their present religion. They were not rich but they were comfortable and I understood from their stories that the elders at their church had helped them a lot. This was why it was important that Benjamin married someone within the faith. Diana was the clear choice when she promptly converted to their faith. Not the obscure girl from a Catholic family.

A few weeks had passed before I saw Benjamin again. I had deliberately avoided visiting him as I felt uncomfortable with Diana's cold reaction to me and confused albeit understanding of Benjamin's family's wonderful treatment. I sincerely did not want Diana to feel like I was intruding, although I enjoyed the friendly reception of his mother and sisters.


Benjamin had no sign of his injuries and the lip stitches didn't seem to have left any mark at all. He had wanted to take me to dinner to thank me. I chose to go to a restaurant which I knew Lee would never go to.

The trouble with Benjamin and me was that whenever we saw each other, we acted like there's no one else in the world but us. Friends would see us together and greet us and we would barely acknowledge them, and it wasn't like we were hiding from anyone. We could talk about anything, big and small, important and trivial, with the same intensity and interest. Sometimes I felt inadequate for someone with a college degree and there were a lot of things that I didn't know about that Benjamin knew. He was up to speed on current events and could express either a biased or a non-biased opinion. And I was (and still am) a sucker for being pampered. I liked it that he held the door for me every time, holding my elbow as we walked through, being ahead of me when going down the stairs and behind me when going up; he shielded me from the rain and from the sun. He and Lee were a lot like each other.

The intimate part became inevitable, and it came with no warning, but with no surprise either. It just happened one night when Lee was away on business. We did not discuss it at all. When it happened we just let the circumstance lead us and we followed its flow. The one thing I learned from it was that the act of making love was so different and more fulfilling, emotionally and physically, when you are both so much in love with one another.

Not that I didn't love Lee. I'd give the world to him if that would make him happy. But I'd go to the end of the world for Benjamin. I would die for Benjamin. And I lived for Benjamin.