The concert was packed. It was disorienting to see the rodeo grounds transformed into a country music venue and filled with so many people from out of town. I led Morgan all the way to the standing-only area in front of the stage. We must have missed all the opening acts because Bryce Tripp himself was already playing. He was sitting on a stool wearing boots and a sleeveless shirt, looking like an underwear model with a guitar and a cowboy hat. I thought maybe he was even wearing makeup.

He was singing some ballad that nobody seemed to know except for a small group of middle-aged women I didn’t recognize, each holding up a cigarette lighter and swaying idiotically.

Pretty much everybody else was at least as drunk as they were, but more restless. A couple of guys I recognized from Biggs, the next town over, started yelling at the stage.

“Hey dicklick! Pick it up, pretty boy! Too slow!”

Bryce Tripp seemed to get the hint. Next song he called out his backup band, slung on an electric guitar, and started playing a much faster song whose only lyrics I could catch were “beer” and “bullets.”

Half the crowd was down in front of the stage dancing drunkenly. Morgan bought beers and managed to pour a shot’s-worth each of whiskey from her purse flask. “Boilermakers!” She yelled over the speakers.

I could tell already that the concert wasn’t going to end well. There was just this feeling in the air. Too many guys who basically wanted to drink, and drink more, and then break whatever rule they could find to break. Halfway into his set, Bryce Tripp slowed it down again, this time playing a crooning love song. A guy nearby took the opportunity to slow-dance with this girl I vaguely recognized from the beer garden. He had his hands all over her, then he started really grabbing her ass. I was pretty sure she’d been with somebody else at the beer garden. It was actually kind of weird how the guy wasn’t just grabbing her but totally reaching around and down between her legs, and she was just letting him go at it.

That’s when I got knocked over.

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