Page 73 of The Girl with No Name

They end the show with their killer ’90s nostalgia tune, “Aikman in the Nineties.”

I’m a ’90s baby, so I don’t technically remember the Troy Aikman football era. But the tune rocks.

Aw, you could be my old-fashioned sugar baby

You give me some kisses and I’ll take my sugar to tea

We’ll buy ourselves a house, make some pretty babies

Read some books together, start our own library

Like the Great Plains wind, November blowin’

Like Facebook ’05, no ads showin’

Like Troy Aikman in the nineties, touchdown throwin’

We got a good thing goin’

We got a good thing goin’

Luna and I can’t help ourselves, and we start a dance movement in the crowd, sweating and thrashing. When they’re done, we both have huge smiles on our faces. And this isn’t even the main event.

“So you gonna give Zach Bryan a chance?” Luna jokes. “Even though you don’t like country?”

I shrug. “Let’s see what he’s got. I’m starting to come around.”

We roam a bit, still looking for Dunn. Our texts to him aren’t going through, which is not totally surprising since service is shit at the festival.

“Guess we’ll have to just enjoy Zach Bryan by ourselves,” Luna says.

“Why do you like him so much?”

She pauses for a moment as we walk to find a good position to see the stage. “I first heard his albumAmerican Heartbreaklast winter, when I was going through a really tough moment in my life. That’s part of the reason I wanted to come with you guys when I heard you talking about him at the bar. I had, like, a spiritual experience with his songs. Kind of similar to how you feel about Red Lemons, I think. When I heard his music, for the first time in a long while, I felt like there was hope for me. Like Zach Bryan understood my pain. He went through something bad, too, and made it through. Embraced it, even. There was hope.”

“What moment was that? Your infamous breakup?”

She nods. “Something like that, yeah.”

“Something like that? What’s that mean?”

She shrugs and smiles slyly.

“No, Luna.”

“What do you mean, no?”

Maybe it’s the LSD, but I’m not letting this go anymore. I look her in the eyes. “I mean, you’re on this trip. You’ve asked a ton of questions about me, and I still feel like I barely know you. I don’t know anything about you. We justsangon stage with the Red Lemons, and I don’t even know your realname! All I know is you came on this trip with a couple of crazy guys, and you’re readingThe Body Keeps The Score.”

Her demeanor changes. She stiffens up.

“If you don’t want to tell me, I guess that’s okay.” I sigh. “I’m just some stranger.”

“You’re not a stranger anymore.” She looks up in the sky for a moment. “I’ve been running from my past a little bit. I admit that. And yeah, I had a really traumatic breakup. I guess it broke me. I haven’t felt the same since.”

“You want to talk about it?”

“No.” She shakes her head, and a crooked grin crosses her mouth. She pokes her tongue out of her mouth sideways, playfully. “I’d rather talk about how you’re a full on rock star who just played at this festival.”

---