All In (Firsts and Forever 2)

I sat beside Mrs. Dombruso, not really watching the local news and glancing at the time every few seconds. “He ought to be landing soon,” she said, noting my restlessness and patting my hand. Dante’s flight had faced weather delays at foggy SFO, and I didn’t even know if he was on the ground yet.

“I can’t believe he’s doing this. What if he had a medical emergency while on the plane? He’s taking such a risk. He should have stayed in Rome until he was a little more stable,” I ranted, not for the first time.

“He misses his sweetie pie,” she said. He’d called her this morning as well, and had told her he was rushing home to me.

“I miss him too, but I’m worried sick. What if his condition took a turn for the worse while he was in the air? And he’s so stubborn, he wouldn’t be talked out of this terrible idea.”

“You’d better get used to stubborn, Charlie.”

Christopher returned with a couple snacks from the vending machine. “Did you bring me something?” she asked him.

“Yes ma’am,” Christopher said, handing her the candy bars. She stashed one in the pocket of her purple velour track suit (which came with a matching bedazzled purple velour baseball cap) and unwrapped the other. We’d discovered over the course of the evening that Mrs. Dombruso had a raging sweet tooth and a penchant for junk food.

My phone rang and I lunged for it, knocking it off the armrest of my chair. I snatched it up with a breathless, “Dante?”

“Hi, angel.”

I sighed with relief and slumped in my chair. “Hi sweetheart. How do you feel?”

“Not bad. The doctor gave me something that knocked me out for most of the flight.”

I grinned and said, “You sound a little loopy.”

“Yeah, sedatives and narcotic pain killers’ll do that to ya.”

“Are you still at SFO?”

“Nope. I would have called sooner, but I just woke up a minute ago.”

“So where are you?”

“I’m right here, Charlie.” That came not from the phone, but from the double doors that had just slid open.

I dropped the phone and raced to his side. Dante was pale and exhausted looking on a stretcher pushed by a nurse, tubes, machines and bandages everywhere. But he was also smiling. I simultaneously burst out laughing and crying, all my worry, all my fear colliding with my relief at seeing him here, alive, with me. Dante reached under his blanket and pulled out a clean, white, monogrammed handkerchief, holding it up to me between the index and middle fingers of his broken right hand. I laughed and cried even harder as I took the handkerchief from him and wiped my eyes.

And then I leaned over and kissed him, lightly, carefully. He moaned against my lips and returned the kiss urgently, passionately, as I held his face between my hands. When we finally broke apart, I looked into his beautiful dark eyes and whispered, “I love you, Dante.”

He smiled up at me, his eyes sparkling even through the narcotic haze, and said, “I love you too, angel.”

“What are all of you looking at?” Mrs. Dombruso demanded from somewhere close behind me. “So my grandson is a gay homosexual. You got a problem with that? If so, you can all go fuck yourselves.”

I glanced up and realized we had quite an audience. Several doctors and nurses crowded the lobby, all in various stages of embarrassment. In the past, this would have mortified me, but right now I really didn’t give a shit. I only cared that my Dante was here with me.

“Hi Nana,” Dante said with a drugged up grin. “Hi Austin.” I looked over my shoulder and saw Mrs. Dombruso leaning on Christopher, her arm linked with his. He was grinning at me happily.

“The boy’s name is Christopher Robin,” Mrs. Dombruso corrected.

“It is? I didn’t realize,” said Dante, knitting his brows as his foggy brain tried to make sense of that.

It took over half an hour for the medical team to get Dante set up in his room and perform a thorough check of all his vital signs. I sat in a chair in the corner and watched as the Italian doctor explained in choppy English and elaborate hand gestures the extent of Dante’s injuries to the three American doctors. Mrs. Dombruso bustled in with Christopher’s assistance, and kissed her grandson on the forehead before swearing at him for a good ten minutes for flying home in his condition.

When she finally ran out of steam, Christopher and I escorted her to the front of the hospital and helped her hail a cab. She was obviously exhausted by the stress of the past few days, dark circles under her watery brown eyes. “He was a damn fool to fly so soon,” she griped. “But thank God he’s home.”

Once she was deposited in a cab bound for her house (she’d given up hiding at the hotel), Christopher turned to me and said, “Well, I guess you don’t need me anymore.” He looked a little lost.