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Wow, talk about over the top.
Sweet, though.
But definitely over the top.
I had some coffee while standing at my kitchen counter, then went into the bathroom and found a note taped to my mirror with a bandage (not like I had any actual tape). It said: Good morning, angel. I hope you slept well. Please text me when you get up. D.
After using the restroom, I located my cell phone and sent the following text to Dante: The kitchen transformation was quite a surprise. You really shouldn’t have. But thank you.
Within a minute he replied: You’re welcome. Are you dressed?
Ok, that was odd. I texted, No.
Get dressed, angel, he wrote.
I started to ask why, but then I really didn’t want to be hanging around naked anyway. I grabbed a pair of gym shorts out of my duffle bag and pulled them on, then dropped the phone into my pocket. About a minute later, there was a knock at the door.
A burly guy with a clipboard was standing in the hall. He looked at me disinterestedly and asked, “Charlie Connolly?”
“Yes.”
“Delivery.”
“I didn’t order anything,” I told him.
“I know.”
I raised my brows at him. “Does this have something to do with Dante Dombruso?”
“Yes, sir.”
Oh my God, seriously? “Well, please take it back. Whatever it is, please tell Dante I said thanks, but no thanks.” The kitchen items were already too much. Whatever now required a burly deliveryman was certainly too much.
“That’s not an option, sir.”
“I’m sorry?”
A second big burly guy appeared beside the first and asked, “Do we have a problem here?”
“The kid wants us to take the stuff back,” Burly Guy Number One told him.
“That’s not an option,” Burly Guy Number Two said.
I rolled my eyes at that. “So if I close and lock this door, what do you think you’re going to do? Knock it down and force me to take whatever over the top thing Dombruso decided to send me? What is it, anyway?”
The guy with the clipboard flipped to a second sheet of paper and recited, “California King mattress, box spring and bed frame. Dining table. Two chairs. Bedroom set. Two boxes of miscellaneous items.”
I stared at the two men outside my door. And once I’d scraped my jaw up off the floor, I pulled the cell phone from my pocket and typed Seriously? and hit send.
A few seconds later, Dante replied, Just take the gifts, Charlie.
I wrote, The kitchen items were already too much. This is way, way, way too much!
I want you to have these things, Charlie. Please don’t argue.
I don’t feel right about accepting them.
Please, Charlie. Take the gifts. For me.
That weakened my resolve. I don’t feel comfortable with this, Dante.
I know, angel. But this means a lot to me. I want to do this for you. Please let me.
If he had insisted I take them, I would have refused. But this gentle approach wore me down. I chewed my lip for a while, then sighed and stepped aside for the deliverymen, and told them, “Ok.”
I went into the kitchen to get out of their way, and sat on the counter. I started composing a message to Dante about how, though I appreciated the thought, he really shouldn’t do things like this, etc, etc, etc. It was long and rambling and sounded really ungrateful. So I deleted the message without sending it, and sent this one instead: Thank you.
He wrote back: Thank you for making me so happy, angel.
That made me feel good. I wrote: Please let this be the last of it, Dante. I can’t keep taking from you like this.
He replied: The living room set I wanted for you is on backorder and will be arriving later in the week. But after that I’ll stop. Probably.
I sighed at that. And then I wrote: Where does someone even buy a king-size mattress before 9 a.m. on a Tuesday morning?
I own a furniture store, among other things, so that was easy.
How convenient. Thank you again, Dante. This was really nice of you. Totally and completely over the top, but nice of you. I will of course repay you for every cent of it, even if it takes me the next ten years.
The only repayment I’ll accept, he wrote, will be the sight of your smiling face enjoying your new things.
One of the deliverymen carried a little round table into the room and set it up in the breakfast nook at the back of the kitchen. It had a black wrought iron frame and a glass top that overlaid a beautiful stone mosaic surface. He left the room and came back with two wrought iron chairs, each with a thick sand-colored cushion. The set was obviously finely made, both functional and artistic. And not that I knew a damn thing about design, but if I had to guess, I’d say it looked like something you’d find in a little courtyard in Italy.
