Page 5 of My Favorite Mistake

“Well, I amgonna head out, actually,” Jimmy said, and then drained his drink.

Connor flipped his palms in awhat the fuckgesture. “You’re not even gonna stay for his second set?”

“I don’t need to.” Jimmy stood and dropped a couple of ones on the table. “I’ve seen enough.”

Connor slapped the table as his cheeks stretched wide with a huge grin. “Yeah you right! I knew it. Should I get his number?”

Jimmy held his hand in the air. “Not yet. Just hold your damn horses, Connor.”

Connor rested his elbows on the table, pinching the bottleneck between his thumb and forefinger and spinning it back and forth. “I’m holding ‘em.”

“We’ll reach out to him, but I’ve got something I’m trying to nail down first,” Jimmy added, and then pointed at Oscar. “If he’s been playing this often and nobody’s talked to him yet, I feel good about waiting. I think he’s pretty far under the radar. Especially way over here in Bywater.”

Connor picked at the label as he side-eyed Jimmy. “What are you nailing down?”

“I reached out to Joe Thompson this week.”

“Doesn’t ring a bell.”

Brennan waved his lowball glass of scotch at them. “Joe Thompson. He manages Phunky Meaux Feaux.”

Connor’s stomach curdled. “Oh yeah. Those idiots who left us ‘cuz they thought they’d do better inAustin. Fuck them.”

He suddenly craved a shot like a soldier in the sandbox jonesing for a woman’s gentle touch. The mere mention of Austin, Texas made him want to either get shitfaced or run the four miles home and pop three sleeping pills.

If you fuck up badly enough, your sins will follow you like a long shadow, no matter how far or fast you run. Connor knew that, and it was why he worked as hard as he did. Why he threw himself into music shows and drowned himself in drinks, and then got up at 4 a.m. every morning to run until his legs gave out. And most of the time, all of it worked.

But the random, left-field reminders would rear their ugly heads out of nowhere, and the self-loathing rage would surge from the center of his aching chest to his tingling extremities. Just like the suffocating humidity of a New Orleans summer, the reminders came like clockwork, and Connor fought like hell to pull himself out of his own head through music, drinks, andrunning. Adrenaline and endorphins were the drugs he was hooked on and that his body never failed to deliver like a tweaking dealer. Adrenaline and endorphins had kept him alive through three deployments—although it rarely did as much for his brothers in arms, and the reminder of that only made him run farther and faster.

Connor blindly swiped Brennan’s half-full glass of scotch and dumped it into his throat.

Brennan glowered at Connor for two seconds before recognition and empathy draped his sharp, aristocratic features, and he let the drink theft slide. He waved at a passing cocktail waitress. “Hey, darlin’. Can you bring me another Macallan?”

“Yes,sir,” she replied flirtatiously, her gaze drawing down and back up Brennan’s form, and Brennan offered her a wink and a smile.

After swallowing the last of Brennan’s drink, Connor slammed the glass on the table. “So how’s fucked-up Meaux Feaux doing over in the wannabe live music capital of the world?”

Jimmy’s brows crawled up his forehead and he crossed his arms over his chest. “Killin’ it. And speaking ofrich, you oughta check out their Facebook feed sometime.”

Connor scoffed. “Fuck Facebook.”

“Yeah, fuck Facebook, whatever, but shit like Facebook and all that other social media bullshit is making them a bunch of wealthy bastards.” Jimmy pointed at Brennan. “And if we want to stay in business without having to depend on this guy to make ends meet, we’re going to have to follow their lead.”

Connor scoffed again, eyeing the shelves of liquor behind the bar, and he was definitely getting a go-cup of something strong on his way out.

“I’m serious,” Jimmy went on. “Frenchmen Street isn’t the same district it was even five years ago, and if we don’t want to have to depend on Riley for supplemental cash for the rest of our natural lives, we’re going to have to ‘get with the times.’” He lifted his hands to curl his fingers in air quotes. “And in these times, we gotta have a digital footprint.”

“Digital footprint.” Connor snorted and then laughed. “Who the fuck are you?”

“Your damn boss, sergeant,” Jimmy said, not missing a beat and pressing the tip of his index finger against the table. “Didn’t you come cryin’ to me the past four weeks in a row about making you a partner?”

Connor snapped his jaw shut and sat up tall, throwing his shoulders back. “Yessir.”

“Well, if you want that, you’re gonna have to get on board with me about this.”

“Get on board with what?”

Jimmy slipped his hands in his pockets, shifting his weight to one leg. “Joe got me in touch with a marketing firm in Austin, and I’m hiring a brand manager to help with our digital marketing. We need an overhaul, and this cat’s gonna help us do that.”

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