Chapter 1
Tate
It’s raining so hard the torrent is coming down sideways. The wind is howling, tree branches are snapping, and I’m laser-focused on following the lighted sign indicating there’s a truck stop up ahead.
My band’s tour bus broke down about half a mile from here on Interstate 87, somewhere between Albany, New York, and the Canadian border. Because of where we are and the weather, dispatch told our driver that it would be morning before anyone could come rescue us.
So that’s why we’re walking in the rain in the middle of nowhere to a small truck stop with what appears to be a diner attached.
“Almost there!” I yell to my friends.
We pick up speed, keeping our heads down as we trudge down the interstate off ramp, across the two-lane highway and into the parking lot.
“Fuck,” my drummer, Angus, grunts as we run the rest of the way.
“Diner!” Jonny Gold, our singer, yells.
We make our way in that direction, yanking open the door and stepping inside.
A blast of air conditioning hits us, but I’d rather be cold than out in this damn storm.
The place is packed, though, and I look around doubtfully.
“There’s nowhere to sit,” Jonny mutters.
“Let’s see if there’s a bathroom where we can dry off,” Bart, our bus driver, suggests.
We make our way into the attached convenience store and head to the restrooms.
I have a clean, mostly dry T-shirt in my backpack, so I take off my windbreaker and the T-shirt I’m currently wearing, replacing it with the dry one. It fared pretty well considering how hard the rain was coming down, and I ball up the wet shirt and windbreaker, stuffing them back in my bag. My jeans are damp, along with my water-resistant boots, but there’s no help for that.
It takes us about ten minutes to freshen up and then we trudge back into the diner. A harried-looking waitress looks up and frowns.
“Wherever you can find room!” she yells, pivoting as someone seated at the counter asks for more coffee.
We pull two small tables together in the back by the window and settle in.
“This is bullshit,” Angus says, shaking his head.
“Sorry about this, boys.” Bart looks frustrated. “I wish I knew what the hell happened.”
“It’s a vehicle,” Mick Lips, our bassist, says gently. “Sometimes they break. This just happened at an unfortunate time in a very unfortunate place.”
“Look, we’ll hunker down here until the storm lets up,” Sam Fielding, our other guitar player, says with a shrug. “Then we’ll find a motel and wait for word on what to do next.”
We were on our way from Albany to Montreal when the bus broke down, but the show isn’t until Tuesday and this is Saturday night. Well, technically it’s Sunday morning now, so we have a couple of days to get there.
“Summer, where the hell is my burger?!” one of the men sitting at the counter yells out.
The bell jingles and two men that look like truckers come in, shaking off the rain and making a mess all over the floor. I watch as the waitress—I guess her name is Summer—eyes them. There’s no doubt in my mind she wants to yell something about how wet they are but she just sighs.
“Find a place to sit, boys,” is all she says.
Then she glances in our direction, and we make eye contact.
She’s pretty, despite the wet tendrils of hair framing her face or the smudge of something—ketchup maybe?—on her cheek.
“Give me another minute,” she calls to me, before hurrying into the back again.
