Page 108 of Symphony of Salvation

“Stop. No more. I’ve been nodding and smiling for close to twenty minutes on the subject already. Koa’s onto me.”

Chuckling, I gratefully sipped the wine. “You signed up for this, Jersey. I paid my dues.”

“At least you understand that crap. I swear my brain shuts off the minute he gets going.”

Jersey snagged my shirt sleeve, halting me before I entered the kitchen. “Can you grab me a beer from the fridge? Slyly hand it to me, and I’ll slink away.”

“You should be ashamed.”

“I am. Now save me.”

I found Koa at the kitchen island, a spread of papers I recognized as students’ assignments in front of him.

“Reading satirical essays, I hear.”

Koa guffawed. “I would never.” He tapped one of the papers. “We’re studying existentialism.”

“That unit never fails to give you grief.” I slipped onto the stool opposite. “Why do you allow your students this level of suffering?”

“Suffering? It’s me who suffers. Listen to this nonsense.” He plucked a page from the pile and put on his reading glasses.

“No. Stop.” I removed the paper from his hand. “Forget your students for five seconds. It’s my turn to have an existential crisis. I didn’t come here to listen to you gripe about how misunderstood Dostoevsky is.”

“We’re studying Nietzsche.”

“Same difference.”

Koa managed to look aghast and insulted simultaneously.

“Beer,” Jersey hissed from the hallway. “You forgot the beer.”

“Get your own damn beer. I’m not your maid, for god’s sake.”

“There is no god,” Koa said. “And in what universe are Nietzsche and Dostoevsky the same? The two men were—”

“Stop. Can we please focus on my problems?” I circled my face with a finger. “Right here. Twenty-first-century existential crisis in the making. Study me, not them. Please. I need help.”

“You aren’t having an existential crisis.”

“I am. You don’t know the half of it.”

Jersey slinked in and retrieved a beer from the fridge. Koa eyed him but turned back to me once he left. “Is this about the undying love you can’t admit harboring for the maestro?”

“That’s not fair. I’ve tried really hard not to fall for him.”

“And it didn’t work.”

“No.”

“Shocking.”

“Shut up, Koa. I’m the post-Christmas Grinch with a heart too big for his chest. It’s my fatal flaw.”

“Unusual. A fatal flaw typically—”

I waved a hand, shushing him. “Stop being an English teacher for five seconds. I beg you.”

Koa, seeming almost amused, sipped his wine. “What’s the issue?”

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