Page 61 of The Girl with No Name

“Deal.” Luna smiles.

He removes his arms. “You guys big Sheryl Crow fans? I fucking love her.”

“Can we get some hot dogs first?” Luna asks. “They’re kind of a personal festival tradition.”

Cuethe corny montage of us frolicking to the tune of “Soak Up the Sun”—specifically, the three of us ordering hot dogs and twelve-dollar beers without a care for inflation. We then hit all the different stages and take in as much music as three humans can.

Other scenes suitable for the montage of the next five hours of that sunny afternoon include:

Blasting our lungs out to Sheryl Crow

Playing bags/cornhole against some college kids who think they’re better’n us (they are)

Dunn getting roped into an arm-wrestling contest with a huge man in a sleeveless biker shirt and beating him

Getting sunburned while we bang our heads to Kip Moore

Some guy spilling an entire sixteen-ounce beer on all three of us

Drinking more and manifesting the perfect buzz

The vibes are immaculate indeed on this spectacular afternoon. Eventually the sun starts to sink in the sky, and finally the sweltering heat begins to dissipate, if only slightly. For what seems like the first time in way too long, my worries about work and about Sam fade away, relegated to a distant corner of my psyche.

We even run into CC, the Luke Combs’ cousin/lookalike from last night as Turnpike is in the middle of their set.

“You mothertruckers!” he yells angrily, pointing at us. He spits on the ground as he approaches, his posse behind him. “I’m gonna kill y’all!”

“Uh…what?” Luna asks. “Thought we were friends now?”

“Yeah. I’m gonna kill y’all…if you don’t let me order you a goddamn round of beers!” A huge grin sweeps across his face, like he just delivered the most killer joke in the history of comedy.

His crew eats it up, hooting and laughing.

“Mothertrucker!” Dunn yells. “Thought you were so blacked out you didn’t remember us!”