Page 86 of My Favorite Mistake

He stared at the whiskey as he swirled it. “I have this weird feeling.”

“What kind of weird? Weird creepy, or weird confusing, or weird funny, or weird what?”

“Weird like…” He looked up from the glass. “Like I actually did something good in my life for once.”

“Don’t be silly, Connor.” She pointed at him with her glass. “You’ve done so much good in your life that you probably can’t even remember it all.”

He lifted his shoulders. “I honestly haven’t.”

“So, like, risking your life to go overseas and fight for your country wasn’t good?” she challenged him, eyebrows raised. “Or being Jimmy’s right-hand man and bringing in his bread and butter for the past ten years wasn’t good? Or saving your ex-girlfriend’s life when she came down with a wicked summer flu wasn’t good?”

Connor screwed up his face like he caught a whiff of something foul. “More like I went overseas and couldn’t keep my brothers alive…orI got Jimmy a bunch of talent, but didn’t know enough about my own industry to help keep him from struggling for nearly a decade…or…” He pressed his mouth in a firm flat line and then downed his drink.

“Or?”she prompted. “What about your sickly ex?”

He huffed and twirled his index finger at the bartender.

She shrugged. “You probably saved my life that week. And you saved Oscar’s life.” She reached for his arm and gave it a friendly shake. “You’re a literal life-saver. That’s two good things.”

“I amnot—”

The bartender set down his second drink, and Connor cut himself off by dumping it in his throat. Liza watched him closely as she weighed his statement about keeping his fellow soldiers alive. It was something easy to forget, especially when a person such as himself showed no physical signs that he still carried the burden of it, let alone that it still bothered him. The invisible scars of war, as it was referred to. A man who carried such a burden was who Connor was when she’d met him; the grief and sense of responsibility for those who didn’t make it home when he’d had the opportunity to do so. It still hung over his head and weighed down his heart.

Recalling that caused her chest to ache in a similar manner to the nagging pain that surfaced when she thought of Oscar and his tragic past. Those soul-piercing anguishes brought to mind her own suffocating sense of loss, and it was honestly what had turned Liza into the well-known crybaby that she was. The cruel nature of the world often seemed way too much for mere mortals to bear.

After Connor twirled his finger a second time, Liza set down her own drink, wrapped her arms around his waist, and rested her chin on his shoulder so she could speak quietly and genuinely in his ear. “I know you think you haven’t been good enough, and that you’ve let a lot of people down, but tonight, right now, even you were able to acknowledge that you did a good thing for Oscar. So just let yourself be proud and happy about that.”

He stiffened against her and huffed but lifted his arm to hold her anyway. “I don’t understand you, Liza.”

“Why are you always saying that?”

“You’re too nice.” The bartender set down the drink and Connor tossed it back as fast as the previous ones.

Liza cringed. “Maybe you should take it easy.”

“Nah.” He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand. “I’m fine. It’s not like I ever drive.”

“And I don’t think I’m too nice,” she added. “I think the world is already cruel enough that I don’t want to add to it if I don’t have to.”

“Have you always felt that way?” He broke away from her and slumped forward to lean his elbow on the bar, spinning the empty tumbler on its side.

“Actually, no.” She slid a barstool close to him and sat down. “I think that flu fever caused me to have some kind of transformative revelation about life.”

He chuckled. “Transformative revelation, huh?” He held the back of his hand against her forehead as if checking her temperature. “I think maybe that fever fried the brain cells that were keeping you skeptical and jaded like the rest of us.”

“Maybe, but if it turned me into a nicer, happier person, what does that matter?” She rested her elbow on the bar and placed her chin in her palm. “Remember when I first got here, and we were fighting all the time?”

“Yeah.”

“And I kept threatening to leave?”

“Oh.” He furrowed his brow. “Yeah.”

“Well.” She turned her palms over. “I’m not leaving. I’m staying for as long as I can.”

Connor swallowed as he drifted his gaze away from her. “Really?”

“Yeah. I feel like I belong here. I feel like I was always supposed to end up here.” She sipped her drink and turned on her stool to face the bar. “Whether that was coming here to be with you, or coming here to work for Jimmy, or whatever else. New Orleans feels like home to me.”

---