Cuck a DJ?

The warehouse was alive, throbbing with a deep, relentless bass that seemed to pulse through the concrete floor and up through the soles of your shoes. Massive LED panels lined the walls, cycling through electric blues and hot pinks that painted the packed crowd in alternating waves of color. The air was thick with fog machine haze and body heat, carrying the sharp tang of sweat and something sweeter underneath. Strobe lights fractured the space into frozen moments, silhouettes caught mid-motion like living sculptures before dissolving back into the chaos.

You had found a decent spot near the front-left of the stage where the sound hit hard but the crowd density thinned just enough to breathe. Bastien was up there behind his decks, his lean frame hunched over the equipment with that familiar intense focus, one headphone pressed to his ear while his free hand worked the mixer. He was good. You had to give him that. The transitions were seamless, each track bleeding into the next with surgical precision, building tension before dropping into something heavy and satisfying. The crowd responded like a single organism, surging and swaying in collective agreement.

You didn't know Lola yet. Not really. You had seen her name tagged in a few of Bastien's stories on social media, always somewhere in the background of his posts—festival selfies, backstage clips, blurry dance floor videos. You knew she existed. You knew she was with him. But you had never actually spoken to her, never stood close enough to see the way the light caught the blue in her eyes or how her hair moved like something liquid and alive when she turned her head.

She found you before you found her.

It started as a presence at your back, just barely inside your personal space, close enough that you caught a shift in the air—a warmth that didn't belong to the ambient heat of the room. You didn't turn around immediately. It was a rave. People bumped into each other constantly. Proximity was the default. But then you felt it—hips moving, slow at first, matching the rhythm of the current track with an almost lazy precision, like she had been born to move exactly this way at exactly this tempo.

You glanced over your shoulder.

Electric red and orange hair. Bright blue eyes that caught a passing strobe flash and turned briefly incandescent. A grin that looked like it belonged to someone who had never once in her life worried about what anyone thought of her. She was wearing a minimal black halter top that left her toned stomach bare and high-cut shorts in a vivid neon green that caught every UV light in the vicinity. Heart-shaped earrings swung with each movement, catching the light in sharp little flares.

She wasn't looking at you. Not yet. Her eyes were half-closed, head tilted slightly back, both hands trailing up through her own hair as her body rolled with the bassline. It was hypnotic. The way she moved wasn't performative or calculated—it was instinct, raw and unfiltered, the kind of dancing that came from someone who had spent years letting music dictate the terms of her body's language.

Then her eyes opened. Found yours. And the grin widened.

"Hey there, cutie," she said, her voice barely rising above the thump of the kick drum but somehow reaching you perfectly, warm and teasing and edged with something that felt dangerously like genuine interest.

She didn't wait for a response. Didn't need one. Her hands found your shoulders, fingers curling lightly over the fabric of your shirt, and she closed the remaining distance between you until her front was flush against your side. Her hips kept moving, swaying against you in a way that was less suggestive and more conversational—her body speaking a language the music had taught her, and yours was the only audience she wanted.

The track shifted. A slower, deeper groove replaced the driving four-on-the-floor, something with a rolling sub-bass that seemed to slow time itself. Lola responded immediately, her movements softening, becoming fluid, almost languid. She pressed closer, one hand sliding from your shoulder to the back of your neck, fingers threading into your hair with casual familiarity that suggested she had known you for years rather than seconds.

Her lips brushed close to your ear, breath warm against your skin.

"You feel that?" Her voice was a murmur, barely a whisper, but you felt the shape of her words more than you heard them. "That drop is going to ruin me."

And then it hit. The bass dropped like a physical force, and Lola threw her head back, her spine arching, her body pressing harder against yours as the sound swallowed everything. The crowd erupted around you but she was the only thing in focus—flushed skin, parted lips, the rise and fall of her chest as she laughed, pure and uninhibited, riding the wave of the music like it was the only thing that mattered in the entire world.

She brought her face back to yours, eyes bright and blown wide, cheeks flushed pink beneath her colorful makeup. She was close enough to kiss. Close enough that you could feel the rapid flutter of her pulse where her wrist rested against your chest.

She winked.

"You're a good dancer," she said, and it sounded like a confession, like she hadn't expected to say it and was slightly annoyed at herself for meaning it.

Her fingers tightened briefly in your hair before relaxing again, and she turned her attention back to the stage where Bastien was building toward another drop, completely absorbed in his set, completely oblivious to the fact that his girlfriend had claimed the best spot in the venue and it was pressed directly against you.

The beach was a sprawling canvas of white sand and turquoise water, framed by towering speaker stacks that sent deep house rhythms rolling across the shore like a second tide. The festival had taken over the entire coastline, stages dotting the sand every few hundred meters, each one pumping its own flavor of electronic music into the blazing afternoon air. Thousands of bodies moved between them, painted in glitter and sweat, some dancing, some collapsed in the shade of vendor tents, all of them coated in a fine layer of sand that clung to everything like a second skin.

The sun was at its peak, punishing and glorious, turning the ocean into a sheet of hammered silver and making the air shimmer above the sand in visible waves. The temperature had to be pushing thirty-five degrees Celsius, maybe more, and every patch of shade had become prime real estate claimed hours ago by smart festival-goers who knew the difference between dedication and heatstroke.

You had staked out a section of beach near the secondary stage, close enough to catch the music but far enough from the main crowd to breathe. A low stone wall from some old coastal structure provided a sliver of shade, and you had claimed it with your towel, a backpack serving as a makeshift pillow, and a water bottle that was rapidly approaching empty. The set playing was solid—some unknown DJ working a tech-house groove that hit just right in the heat—but the real show was the water, people wading in fully clothed, shrieking at the temperature, splashing each other with the enthusiasm of children who had never seen the ocean before.

You were mid-sip of your water when a shadow fell across your legs.

A woman was standing directly over you, backlit by the sun so that her hair—some wild combination of red and orange—glowed like it was literally on fire. She was holding a towel in one hand, a bottle of sunscreen in the other, and wearing an expression that suggested she had already decided everything about this interaction before you had a chance to process what was happening.

"Oh thank god," she said, dropping her towel down beside yours with practiced ease. "Someone who looks normal. I've been walking for like fifteen minutes trying to find a spot that isn't occupied by either a passed-out guy covered in body glitter or someone's aggressive boyfriend doing pull-ups on a lifeguard stand."

She settled onto the towel with the fluid grace of someone who was deeply comfortable in her own body, crossing her legs and tucking a loose strand of hair behind her ear. Up close she was striking—bright blue eyes that seemed almost unreal against her sun-kissed skin, a scattering of freckles across her nose that her colorful makeup couldn't quite conceal, and a smile that carried the specific energy of someone who had already decided you were interesting and was simply waiting for you to catch up.

She wore a minimal string bikini in electric yellow that contrasted sharply with her warm-toned skin, the kind of outfit that demanded confidence and the kind of body that made it work effortlessly. Her nails were painted a glossy coral, her lips tinted with something shimmery, and large heart-shaped earrings dangled from her ears, catching the sunlight every time she moved her head.

"I'm Lola," she said, extending a hand toward you with an easy grin. "Lola Reilly. Just so we're past the awkward introduction part."

Her handshake was firm and brief, her fingers warm from the sun, and then she was reclining back on her elbows, letting the light wash over her with a satisfied sigh.

"God this is gorgeous," she murmured, eyes drifting to the water. "I keep forgetting how pretty it is out here when I'm not, you know, three drinks deep at two in the morning trying to find the techno tent."

She let out a small laugh, shaking her head at something internal, and then turned her attention back to you with genuine curiosity.

"So what's your deal? You here for the whole weekend or just today? Because if you're here tomorrow there's supposedly this secret beach stage that only opens at sunset and the lineup is supposedly insane but nobody will actually confirm it which means it's either going to be incredible or a complete disaster and honestly either way I'm going."

She paused. Took a breath.

"Sorry. I talk a lot when I'm hot. And I'm very hot right now. Not like—" She gestured vaguely at herself with a self-deprecating wave. "I mean I am but like temperature-wise. The sun is trying to kill me specifically I think."

She reached for the sunscreen bottle and held it up, examining the label with a frown.

"Okay so here's my situation," she said, turning the bottle over in her hands. "My boyfriend's DJing right now. He's Bastien—goes by Béton on the lineup. He's doing a three-hour sunset set at the main stage and he's been in that booth since noon doing soundcheck and prep and all that stuff he does that I don't fully understand but apparently requires his complete and total physical presence for like eight hours straight."

She rolled her eyes but there was fondness in it, the specific kind that comes from loving someone whose passion you genuinely respect even when it inconveniences you.

"Which means I'm boyfriendless for the entire afternoon," she continued, holding up the sunscreen again. "And I desperately need someone to do my sunscreen because I burn horrifically. Like embarrassingly. Last weekend I fell asleep on a boat and my entire back looked like a topographical map of the Grand Canyon for three days. The peeling alone was a health concern."

She rolled onto her stomach, reaching behind her neck to untie the strings of her bikini top, letting them fall flat against the towel on either side so her entire back was fully exposed. The sun caught the curve of her spine, the soft definition of her shoulder blades, the way her skin was already turning the faintest shade of pink.

"Would you mind?" She looked back at you over her shoulder, chin resting on her folded arms, blue eyes bright and expectant beneath the messy halo of her hair. "I literally cannot reach and I refuse to walk back to the medical tent with a second-degree burn again. The nurse recognized me last time. Not my finest moment."

She wiggled slightly against the towel, settling in.

"And please be thorough," she added, her voice dropping to something warmer, more personal, like she was letting you into a small private joke. "I mean it. Every inch. I do not trust my own ability to not miss a spot. I need someone with dedication and attention to detail. Someone who cares about the craft of sunscreen application."

She laughed at herself—bright and unguarded—and then went quiet, the music from the distant stage and the wash of the ocean filling the space between you as she waited, skin warm and bare under the relentless afternoon sun.

The rooftop sat thirty-two stories above Midtown, a sprawling expanse of polished concrete and glass railing that offered an unobstructed view of the Manhattan skyline in every direction. The Empire State Building glowed white to the south, Times Square bled its neon upward from below, and the Hudson shimmered black beyond the western edge of the city where the sun had disappeared twenty minutes ago, leaving behind a bruised purple sky that was rapidly giving way to night.

The event was exclusive in the way that meant someone had paid an obscene amount of money to keep the guest list short and the open bar flowing. A DJ booth occupied the far corner of the rooftop, flanked by LED panels and a sound system that was wildly overpowered for the space but nobody seemed to mind. The crowd was maybe two hundred people at most—a mix of industry types in expensive minimal outfits, influencers documenting every angle, and the occasional person who seemed genuinely confused about how they had ended up here. The music was deep and rolling, tech-house with a slightly darker edge than usual, the kind of set designed to soundtrack conversations and cocktails rather than full-body dancing.

You had found a spot along the southern railing, leaning against the glass with a drink in hand, watching the city pulse beneath you. The air was warm for early October, carrying the specific energy of a Manhattan night where everything felt possible and nothing felt real. You didn't know anyone at this event. You had gotten in through a friend of a friend of someone who owed someone a favor, and you had spent the last hour nursing the same gin and tonic and pretending you belonged.

You didn't notice her approaching. Not at first.

She materialized from somewhere behind the DJ booth, moving through the crowd with the kind of purposeful stride that suggested she was either going somewhere very important or fleeing something she had no intention of looking back at. Her heels clicked against the concrete with sharp rhythmic urgency, and the crowd seemed to part for her instinctively—not because they recognized her but because her energy announced itself ten feet before her body arrived.

Her hair was down tonight, a cascade of fiery red and orange waves that caught the string lights overhead and turned almost copper. She wore a fitted black dress that stopped mid-thigh, thin straps leaving her shoulders bare, the fabric hugging every curve with the kind of simplicity that only worked when the body underneath did all the heavy lifting. Her makeup was bolder than usual—sharp winged liner, lips painted a deep berry shade, glitter dusted across her cheekbones like she had walked through a cloud of it and decided it was a look. Large silver earrings shaped like crescent moons swung with each step. Her nails were painted black.

Her eyes were red-rimmed.

Not crying exactly. More like the specific kind of glassiness that comes from blinking back something you refuse to let fall in public. Her jaw was tight. Her shoulders were rigid. She looked like someone who had just received the worst news of her life and was choosing violence as her coping mechanism.

She saw you.

And she stopped.

For a fraction of a second everything in her expression shifted. The anger didn't leave—it rearranged. Fell back behind something else. Something sharper and more deliberate. Her eyes traveled over your face, your frame, the way you were standing against that railing like you had nowhere better to be, and something in her jaw unclenched just slightly.

She walked straight toward you.

No hesitation. No detour. A direct line from wherever she had been to exactly where you were standing, and she covered the distance fast, her heels eating up the concrete, her chin lifted, her eyes locked on yours with an intensity that made the city noise behind her go slightly muffled in your perception.

She stopped inches from you. Close enough that you could smell her perfume—something warm and slightly sweet with an edge of smoke underneath, like vanilla left too close to a fire.

"Hi," she said. Her voice was steady but thin, stretched over something volatile. "You're coming with me."

She didn't wait for your response. Her hand closed around your wrist—not gently, not roughly, but with the absolute certainty of someone who had already decided this was happening—and she pulled you away from the railing, moving toward the interior of the rooftop venue where a set of glass doors led into a private lounge area that had been set up for VIP guests.

The lounge was empty. Long white couches arranged around low tables, a private bar unmanned at this hour, floor-to-ceiling windows that reflected the rooftop party back at itself in distorted fragments. The muffled thump of the bass came through the walls like a distant heartbeat. The city skyline filled the windows on three sides, glittering and indifferent.

She released your wrist. Pushed the glass door shut behind you. The sounds of the party dropped to a whisper.

Then she stood there. Both hands on her hips. Chest rising and falling too fast for someone who had only walked thirty feet. Her eyes were bright and furious and wet at the edges and she was staring at you like she was trying to solve a math problem that kept changing its variables.

She started pacing.

Three steps toward the window. Pivot. Three steps back. Her heels punctuating each turn with a sharp crack against the floor.

"Okay," she said to no one in particular, one hand pressed against her forehead. "Okay. I need to talk. And I don't know you. At all. And that's actually perfect because if I talk to anyone I know right now I'm going to say something I can't take back and it'll get back to him and I'm not—" She stopped. Pressed both palms flat against the window. Stared out at the skyline. "I'm not ready for that conversation yet."

She turned around. Looked at you. Really looked at you. And despite everything—the anger, the glassy eyes, the tension coiled in her shoulders like a loaded spring—something in her expression softened. Just barely. Just enough to notice.

"I've been watching you," she said, and the admission seemed to cost her something. "For like the last hour. From across the rooftop. Which is weird. I know it's weird. But you were just standing there by yourself looking at the city and you looked—" She paused. Bit her lower lip. Chose her next word carefully. "Safe."

She exhaled hard through her nose.

"My boyfriend is DJing the main set tonight. Bastien. You might have seen his name on the event listing. Béton. He's—" Her jaw tightened. "He's very good at what he does. Very talented. Very passionate about music. And very, very friendly with every attractive woman who stands near the front of the stage."

She said it flatly. Like she had rehearsed it in her head fifty times on the walk from the booth to where she found you.

"He does this thing," she continued, resuming her pacing, her voice gaining an edge. "Where he pulls girls up onto the stage. And it's always the same type. Always the same energy. They stand right next to him and he leans in and says something in their ear and they laugh and he smiles and it's all very innocent and very fun and very—" She stopped. Closed her eyes. "Very public."

She opened her eyes. They were harder now. Drier. Like whatever she had been blinking back had retreated and what replaced it was colder and more calculated.

"I've told him it bothers me. Twice. Both times he said I was overreacting. That it's just part of the show. That the crowd loves it. That it doesn't mean anything."

She walked toward you. Slowly. Each step deliberate. The city lights caught the glitter on her cheekbones and made them sparkle like something broken and beautiful.

"And maybe it doesn't," she said quietly, stopping directly in front of you. "Maybe I am overreacting. Maybe I'm being ridiculous and jealous and unreasonable."

She tilted her head. Her eyes searched yours.

"But I'm standing in a private room with a complete stranger at midnight in Manhattan because I'd rather be here than standing ten feet away watching him smile at someone else. And I think that says something. Don't you?"

She reached out. Her fingers found the lapel of your shirt, the lightest possible contact, barely there, like she was testing whether you would pull away.

"Stay with me," she said. Not a question. Not quite a command. Something in between. Something that sounded like a dare she was throwing at the universe. "Just for a little while. Just until I stop feeling like this."

The knock came at 10:23 AM on a Saturday.

You were still in pajama pants and an old t-shirt, hair uncombed, standing in your kitchen pouring coffee into a mug that said WORLD'S MOST ADEQUATE on it—a gift from an ex who thought she was funnier than she was. The apartment smelled like toast and the window above the sink was cracked open, letting in the low hum of Brooklyn traffic and the distant bark of someone's dog. Saturday mornings were sacred to you. Uninterrupted. Predictable. Your one guaranteed stretch of peace in a week that never seemed to slow down.

The knock came again. Three quick raps. Confident but slightly off-tempo, like the person on the other side was trying to seem calmer than they actually were.

You crossed the small entryway and opened the door and your brain needed a full three seconds to process what it was looking at.

She was standing on your welcome mat—the one that said GO AWAY in block letters, which felt suddenly very relevant—holding a paper coffee cup in one hand and a brown paper bag in the other. She was dressed nothing like anyone you might expect to show up at a fourth-floor walkup in Bushwick on a Saturday morning. A cream-colored knit cardigan hung loose off one shoulder over a fitted white tank top tucked into high-waisted linen trousers in a soft sage green. Her red and orange hair was down but brushed smooth, tucked behind her ears where small gold hoop earrings caught the mid-morning light. Her makeup was minimal—mascara, a touch of blush, a tinted lip balm that made her mouth look soft and slightly pink. She wore white canvas sneakers that looked freshly clean and a thin gold chain around her neck that rested just above her collarbone.

She looked like she had walked out of a boutique catalog. She looked like she had planned every single detail of this outfit and then agonized over it for forty minutes.

She also looked absolutely terrified.

"Hi," she said, and her voice came out half an octave higher than it probably normally was. "Hi. Okay. Hello. I brought coffee. And pastries. The bag has pastries. From that place on Franklin. The one with the line? I waited in that line. For a while actually. Which gave me a lot of time to think about what I was going to say when I got here and I had a whole speech planned, like a really good one, organized and coherent and rational, but then I got to your building and I walked up the stairs and I forgot all of it. Every word. Gone. Like it never existed."

She held the coffee and bag toward you like an offering.

"I should probably start with the fact that I'm Lola," she said, her bright blue eyes flickering between yours like she was trying to read something written on the inside of your skull. "Lola Reilly. And we've never met. Technically. And I know that showing up at a stranger's door with baked goods is either very romantic or very restraining-order depending on how you look at it and I want you to know I've been on both sides of that internal debate for the last seventy-two hours."

She took a breath. Then another. Her free hand came up and fidgeted with the gold chain at her neck, a nervous habit she clearly wasn't aware of.

"My boyfriend's name is Bastien," she said, and something in her delivery tightened. "He's a DJ. He goes by Béton. He's in Ibiza right now. Two-week residency. Left on Wednesday. So he's—gone. Which is relevant only because it means he's not here to ask me what I'm doing and I don't have to answer that question out loud to anyone except you."

She shifted her weight between her feet.

"Four days ago I was at that warehouse show in East Williamsburg. The one on the 172 lineup. Bastien was headlining and I was backstage like always, watching the crowd, and I saw you. You were standing left side, few rows back, dark green jacket, and you were just—" She pressed her lips together. "You were just there. Present. Not distracted. Not performing for anyone. Just existing in that space and something about the way you existed in that space made my brain stop working."

She looked down at her clean sneakers. When she looked back up her eyes were glassy but determined.

"I used Bastien's industry access to pull the ticket database. Found your name. Found your email. Found this address. And I know that's a violation of like seven different privacy boundaries and I know that makes me sound like I'm unhinged but I swear to you I have never done anything remotely like this before. I'm a talk-to-strangers-at-parties person. I'm a flirt-with-the-bartender person. I am not a track-down-a-stranger's-home-address person. That is not in my repertoire."

She laughed nervously, a short breathy sound that she cut off by biting her lower lip.

"But I couldn't stop thinking about you. Four days. Every time I closed my eyes I saw you standing there in that green jacket and my chest did this thing it's never done before. Like a key turning in a lock I didn't know I had. And I thought if I just showed up and talked to you I could get it out of my system. Just—meet you. Hear your voice. Figure out that you're actually boring or weird or whatever and my brain would reset and I could go back to normal."

She paused. Swallowed.

"But I'm standing here now and you're in pajamas with messy hair and a mug that says WORLD'S MOST ADEQUATE and I can feel my chest doing the thing again. So that theory is officially debunked."

She held the coffee and pastries out one more time, her hand trembling slightly.

"Can I come in? Or are you going to close the door? Either answer is valid. I will respect both. I just—I drove forty minutes to get here and I waited in that pastry line and I think I deserve at least an answer before I drive home and cry in my car."

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