Crop Top Season is for Lovers Part I

There’s a moment — somewhere between your second vodka redbull and your fourth shot with no chaser— when the dance floor stops being a place and starts being a universe.

The bass is in your chest, your drink is in your hand, and your friends are orbiting you like hot little planets, all teeth and glitter and sweat. The strobe lights hit just right, and suddenly you’re not in the song, you are the song. Your body’s moving in ways your morning self would be embarrassed by, but right now? You’re god. You’re chaos incarnate. You’re the main character, the love interest, the plot twist, and the cliffhanger all at once.

Your friend grabs your face and screams something you can’t hear over the music, but you scream back anyway, because it’s not about words — it’s about being. You could fall in love with a stranger right now. Or maybe with everyone. Or maybe just with yourself, sweaty and radiant and alive.

Someone’s hand brushes your hip. It could be an accident, but it’s not. You turn, you smile, you’re infinite. You could take them home. You could kiss them here. You could disappear in the crowd and never come back.

This is why we go out. Not for the drinks, not for the photos, not even for the stories — but for this feeling. This chaotic, stupid, sexy immortality. The knowledge that for three minutes and twenty-six seconds, while this song plays and the lights keep flashing, nothing bad can touch you. You’re untouchable. You’re forever.

And when the song changes and the spell breaks, you just wait for the next one. Because the night’s still young, and so are you. **Apologies for the shameless Nicky quote. I couldn’t help myself.

***

While the rest of the world thinks of Los Angeles as eternally warm, we still have our own kind of seasons — measured not by leaves changing or snow falling, but by how badly you need a jacket on a night out. And let me tell you, that first night of the year when the air is soft enough for a crop top and short shorts — and you’re perfectly comfortable — is a holy event.

And as you might have guessed, tonight is that night — when the air isn’t crisp or biting, but soft, relaxed, almost… welcoming. Naturally, I ditch my signature black leather motorcycle jacket and slip into a cropped tank top.

How long till you get here? flashes across my phone.

As I call a car, I catch one last look in the mirror and wonder if crop top season is about more than just the weather. Maybe it’s a feeling, too.

My Uber ride is short, uneventful — just thick with anticipation. I cue up Dua Lipa and direct my driver to The Abbey, because Find My Friends says that’s where the boys have landed.

The breeze from the open window washes over my face, carrying that restless energy I know too well — the want for something to happen. The need for it. And the quiet certainty that it will. There’s a specific kind of comfort I get from that feeling.

Once I’m inside the Abbey my heart starts to feel a bit better. There’s something about the strobe lights, the gogo boys, the faint smell of vodka soda spilt on the floor that makes me feel like I’m home.

“Oh my god!” I hear a voice I recognize almost immediately.

I spin around to fall into Nate’s embrace. “What the fuck took you so long!” I find myself surrounded by familiar faces plastered with bright and welcoming smiles. 

“The invention of the teleportation machine,” I joke to an unreceptive audience. Nate looks at me with a tilted head and a wonky side eye that leads me to believe he’s had just about as many drinks as I want to have. “I’m going to the bar.” 

Leaving the boys in the dust, I scamper to the bar where I order two lemon drop shots and a double vodka redbull. Just to be clear, ordering a double anything at the Abbey or Chapel is basically a death sentence, and it’s a fate I’ve happily suffered many, many times. 

***

The night pulls me forward, sharp air cutting against my skin, carried only by a hunger I can’t shake.

I don’t remember where I was before this, or how I ended up here. None of that matters. What matters is feeding the want.

Behind the basketball courts, I catch the eyes of others like me. Predators in the glow of a single streetlight, bodies shifting in shadow, some already tangled together — the grunts, the gasps, the sound of throats closing around desire. It only drags me closer.

My gaze lands on him — tall, dark, eyes both warning and inviting. I don’t hesitate. One moment I’m walking, the next my shorts hit the ground, my crop top shoved up, my body folded into his. The rhythm takes me — flesh, breath, choke, slap.

There’s no pain, no ache left, just a quieting of the need. For now, the hunger has been fed.

There’s something to be said about that first warm night in Los Angeles.

***

My senses came back to me slowly, like a hangover fading in reverse. One minute, I was lost in a fog. The next, I was clutching a chain-link fence, a stranger’s body pressed against mine, filling me in ways I didn’t ask for but didn’t deny.

I didn’t know how it started, but I knew how it ended — with his body shuddering, contracting, and finally releasing into me. And just like that, it was over.

I pulled my shorts up and walked toward the edge of the park without ever turning around. Because sometimes, it’s not the sex itself that terrifies us. It’s the face on the other end of it.

My phone vibrates in my pocket for what must have been the hundredth time. The time reads 3:35am. I have four unread texts and two missed calls from Nate. One of the texts is an address.

I guess the night’s not done yet.