it, Nick Velez is objectively hot. He’s tall and thin, with light brown skin, dark hair that’s not too long or too short, and the aforementioned persistent scruff on his face. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Nick clean-shaven, and I regularly see him at five A.M. That’s just how his face looks, apparently.
But, unlike my romance-obsessed BFF, I am not someone who gets carried away by fantasies of love. Sure, Nick is hot, and okay, maybe I’ve had a couple of daydreams where he pins me against the brick wall of the coffee shop and rubs my face raw with his stubble, but there are lots of hot people in the world who aren’t my boss. And since I kind of need this job, and I really need to keep my personal life as drama-free as possible, I think I’ll stick to dating people who aren’t intertwined in any other area of my life. Because taking care of my dad is messy enough, and I don’t really need anyone else’s feelings to worry about.
As if on cue, my phone buzzes. It’s Tracey, the receptionist at my dad’s care facility.
“Do you think you could check in for a minute when you get a chance? Your dad’s having an episode.”
Chapter Two
I summon Nick from his office and tell him I’m leaving. Another reason why Nick is a great boss, despite his abysmal taste in music: he’s always okay with me leaving, on no notice, to take care of my dad.
“Let me know how it goes, okay?” he says, one hand on my arm and concern in his deep brown eyes.
“Sure,” I say, pulling off my apron, already out of coffee-serving mode and into crisis mode.
A short drive later, I buzz the door at Dad’s facility and wait to be let in. The stress, the potential bad mood, is coming over me, so I take a deep breath. Inhale positivity. Exhale stress. I smile along with my exhale, willing myself to be Good Mood Chloe for my dad, regardless of what greets me on the other side of the door.
Because no matter what I find—no matter what condition my dad is in—this is my responsibility. It’s not my brother, Milo’s, because he lives in Brooklyn in an apartment I’ve never visited, on account of I can’t fathom leaving my dad that long. And it sure as hell isn’t my mom’s, considering that she bounced right out of our lives when she left us for some dude she met on the internet when Milo and I were ten.
It was the week before the fourth-grade Christmas pageant, aka the biggest event on my calendar at the time. Milo wasn’t involved, because even back then he was too cool for earnest performances, but I was an angel narrator that delivered a lengthy speech about the importance of the baby Jesus’s birth. (In retrospect, a public elementary school probably shouldn’t have been putting on such an explicitly religious production, but what can I say? It was the ’90s in Ohio, and anything went.) Mom was a fantastic seamstress who made most of her own clothing, and she promised to make me a costume that would leave all those donkeys and wise men in the dust, meaning that everyone in the audience would be unable to focus on anything but me, instead of the birth of our Lord and Savior. Mom might not have said it that way, but that’s the way I interpreted it.
But then she left with some dude named Phil, and I wasn’t about to bother Dad or Milo by telling them I needed a costume. Dad was shell-shocked, staring at the TV for hours, and Milo was alternating between preteen anger and sobs. The worst part was that online dating as we know it didn’t even exist back then, which meant that her leaving us for a guy she met online was Super Weird and basically a school-wide scandal. Everyone, even my teachers, looked at me with pity.
So I got shit done. I tore the white bedsheets off my bed and, using the most rudimentary of sewing skills, fashioned them into a sort-of-toga, sort-of-angel-robe. I’m not saying it was the best angel costume the elementary school had ever seen, but it worked, and it was the first time I realized two things: I can only count on myself if I want to get something done, and I’m capable of doing pretty much anything.
I’m still smiling and deep-breathing as the door clicks unlocked and