closet for this very day.” I reach for my phone to look for a picture of my ideal wallpaper to show Nick, but he grabs my hand first.
“Hey,” he says. “We can get to work later. Right now, you’re resting.”
He keeps his hold on my hand, and I stop breathing. This goes on for so long that I start to think the lack of oxygen is going to cause problems, and I can’t hear anything but the laugh track on TV as I stare at Nick.
“Nick,” I start.
He drops my hand. “I should probably go.”
“Can you stay?” I ask, my mouth spitting out the words before I can even think about them. “For another episode?”
The credits start rolling for Family Ties. “Oh, Nick. Have you ever seen Family Ties? Michael J. Fox is this little ’80s Republican in a family full of bleeding hearts. It’s amazing.”
Nick leans back against the wall. “One episode.”
“One episode.” I smile and push my feet, under the blanket, onto his lap. When I finish my soup, he takes the bowl from me and I scoot down under the blankets and get comfortable. One minute I’m laughing at something Meredith Baxter Birney said, and the next thing I know, I’m blinking as the end credits roll.
“Uggggggh,” I groan, then look for Nick at the end of the bed . . . but he isn’t there. Did he leave?
And then I hear a sound from the kitchen. Running water and dishes clinking. “Uh, hello?” I ask.
“You’re up.” Nick steps around the half wall, drying a bowl with a dish towel.
I squint. “What are you doing here?”
He shrugs. “It seemed wrong to leave while you were asleep, so I washed some dishes.”
“You washed my dishes?”
“It was either that or keep watching Family Ties, which I had no interest in.”
“I’m offended, but thank you.”
Nick gestures with his head. “Tea on your bedside table.”
“Oh.” I reach over and take a sip of something surprisingly boozy. “Uh, whoa.”
“Hot toddy,” Nick clarifies. “So there’s some whiskey involved. Mama Velez always swears it will cure your ills.”
I take another sip. “I like the way Mama Velez thinks.”
Nick retreats into the kitchen, where I can see him at the sink, washing, drying, and putting away.
“Where is Mama Velez, anyway?” I ask.
“New Mexico,” Nick says. “Where I grew up.”
“Your dad, too?”
“He’s dead,” Nick says without pausing his work.
“Oh,” I say. “I’m sorry.”
“Don’t be. He was an asshole.”
I don’t say anything, because I’m not sure what I’m supposed to say. I spent years working with Nick without knowing a single thing about him, and now it’s like I’m learning every single fact about his past in the span of a week. He likes to bowl? He can cook? His father is a dead jerk?
“I have an asshole parent, too,” I finally say. “But my mom is alive, just currently in parts unknown.”
“Sucks, right?” Nick walks toward me, drying his hands on his flannel shirt.
“Yeah,” I say. “Whenever people complain about how their parents are overbearing or whatever, I’m like, ‘Ha-ha, okay, my mom abandoned our family and never looked back.’”
Nick sits down on my bed.
“What about your dad? What was his particular brand of suckitude?” I ask.
“He cheated on my mom. Not just once. Over and over.”
“And did your mom just deal with it?”
“She’s one of those old-fashioned types who think people should stay married forever, no matter what happens.”
“That was . . . definitely not my mom,” I say. “So did they stay married until he died?”
Nick shakes his head. “She finally got fed up with the constant cheating and confronted him about it. There was yelling and screaming and then he tried to hit her.”
My eyes widen. “Tried? What happened?”
Nick shrugs. “He got me instead.”
I swallow hard. That sounds like Nick; jumping in front of someone else to take a hit. Always taking care of someone, even if it means he gets hurt.
“How old were you?”
“Twelve. My sister was only eight. And my mom was willing to put up with just about anything from him, I guess, but once she saw him hit me, it was like a switch flipped. And after that, she took us to my grandma’s and we didn’t hear from my dad again, until we got word that he died.”
“Wow,” I say. “That’s really bad. I’m sorry I led with the story about my mom; at least she never laid a hand on us.”
Nick smiles, this one a tiny, sarcastic thing. “I don’t really think anyone’s keeping score.”