She shoved at me. “Oh, shut up. He’s hot, and I like his music.” She eyed me. “Have you never had a celebrity crush?”
“Nah. I figured, I was with Glen, and I loved him, and I was going to marry him, so why entertain thoughts of anyone else?”
“Because there are sexy people in the world, and harmless crushes on people you’ll never meet are totally innocent.”
“I guess.”
She just half sighed, half laughed. “We’ll get you thinking outside the Glen box, Char-Char. Don’t you worry.” She tapped the flyer. “In the meantime, we’re going to this, right? It’ll be a hell of a good time.”
I was already putting the address into a navigation app. “A little less than an hour from here. Let’s go!”
She was giddy. “Yes! Myles North, here I come!”
“I don’t think he knows or cares that you’re coming, Lexie.”
She just bit her lip and smirked. “No, but give me ten minutes alone with him and he’ll know I’m coming, all right. More than once, if I’m lucky.”
I groaned. “You’re dirty.”
“Yes, yes I am.”
And so, we retrieved my car and headed for a country music festival.
And, honestly, I was excited too—and I resolved to keep my mind open, and really try to just enjoy the experiences, not overthink them, and have fun. No matter what form that fun may take.
And if fun came in the form of a hot guy and some innocent fun, so be it.
4
Crow
God, what a wonderful clusterfuck this festival was.
How the organizers had managed to book such big-name, high-dollar acts, I couldn’t figure out. The main stage was tiny and rickety and scary as hell, the so-called “wings” were semitrailers backed up to the stage, the electrical and sound wiring was a godawful tangled mess, and the backstage area was only separated from the pit by a few paltry, handmade white sawhorses with “Do Not Cross” stenciled on with spray paint, and beyond the sawhorses, the equipment trailers were parked end to end.
The field was a giant open space, maybe a hundred acres of old fallow field, with all the parking way off in back along a tree line near the county trunk line. There was, fortunately, plenty of what mattered: trash cans, porta-potties, food, and water. There were also a scary number of giant-ass bonfires—like twenty-foot high bonfires—scattered in regular intervals. But each one was maintained and secured by a trio of what looked to be off-duty cops or ex-military dudes, so I doubted anyone would fall in and die. There were tents in clusters all along the tree lines to either side, and in my prowling of the festival grounds last night and this morning, I’d seen and heard fornication in plenty. I saw no police presence at all, and people were wandering around with open bottles of liquor and smoking joints—it was reminiscent of what I imagined the original Woodstock had been with a quarter of the crowd. Which, to me, meant this would actually be fun, instead of a miserable fuckin’ muddy mess. There were food trucks way in back near the makeshift parking lot, and wandering vendors charging an arm and a leg for sweating liter bottles of water, cans of beer, and mini bottles of booze.
I mean, there was a shitload of laws being broken here, but somehow the organizers had managed to make sure those who may’ve cared were looking the other way.
Women were dancing around topless, which I liked.
The sound was loud as fuck, but shitty, which I didn’t like.
Overall, a good fuckin’ time.
We were slated to go on later tonight, as one of the main acts. The festival was broken up into three days—yesterday, day one, was the day featuring the sort of acts who opened for the up-and-comers, with a well-known but not A-list act as the day one headliner; day two was the big day, when the top-draw headliners performed hour sets, opener acts doing twenty minutes in between headliners, fifteen to thirty minute breaks between sets, and the biggest draws going on well past dark, when people would be blitzed and wild. Day three, the closing day, was a sort of taper-off, with more lesser-known artists going on to round things out as people packed up and went home.
It was barely after noon on day two and things were just ramping up. I didn’t have jack shit to do until at least eight tonight, when we’d have to start moving our shit around in preparation for setup, and then Myles and the guys would go on around nine. I had plenty of time between now and then to just kick back, have a few beers, and enjoy the show.
And by the show, I mean the crowd, which was liberally salted with pretty women wearing a whole lot of nothing from the waist up, and even one or two dressed in less, as if it was Burning Man or some shit. I didn’t mind. Eye candy, if nothing else.
I drank slow, and not much—I reserved my real benders for when it mattered, and the rest of the time, I tended to just nurse a beer over a long, long time. More for the taste and the appearance than any real desire to chase a buzz. I’d had enough of the party life by this point of my life, honestly.
But that was a different story.
Hour after hour, I prowled the crowd. Watched the acts, taking note of the newcomers and sorting them into worthy of playing with Myles and not so much. Enjoyed the scenery—the bright sun and warm air, the birds wheeling and singing, the trees in the distance waving their green arms, the wide open sky above and, yes, the half-naked women shaking their tits, and I let myself play a game of sort-the-tits, wherein I mentally assessed and categorized boobs by size and shape.
Not all the women were topless, though. Plenty were clearly just there to listen to country and get hammered in a big ol’ empty field. You didn’t have to drive anywhere, and there wasn’t much by way of security, and no one was paying attention to what you did as long as you weren’t bothering anyone. And the few times some drunk asshole tried to start shit, he was shut down by the rest of the nearby crowd, who just wanted to have some laid-back fun.
