“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.”

“You mean there’s not an official ranking of parents somewhere?” I ask. “At the top is, I don’t know, Barack and Michelle? And at the bottom is . . . what celebrities are really bad parents?”

“You’re asking the wrong guy.”

I take another sip of my hot toddy. “You know, I’m feeling better already. I think it’s the hot toddy. Tell Mama Velez thank you.”

“Or,” Nick says, nudging my left foot, “it may be the fact that you actually slept for once.”

I make a fart noise with my mouth. “Sleep is overrated.”

“Says the girl who’s stuck in bed because she made herself sick with her unhealthy lifestyle.”