The Sweet Escape (feat. Akon)- Gwen Stefani In your defense, you were very drunk. And not the cute, tipsy kind where you’re just warm and giggly and maybe saying slightly embarrassing things in a group chat. No—this was the dangerous kind of drunk. The “karaoke in the Uber, confess your sins to strangers, accidentally tell the bartender your whole life story” kind of drunk. Unfortunately, that level of intoxication came with a bold, very misguided sense of clarity. The kind that convinced you had to call Grayson Hawthorne at exactly 3:33 A.M. Your ex-boyfriend. The love of your life—slash the man you swore you’d never speak to again. And you didn’t just call him. You left him a voicemail. Not a short, “hey, call me back” voicemail. Not a tearful, “I miss you” voicemail. No. You sang to him. You sang Gwen Stefani’s “The Sweet Escape” into his voicemail box like your life depended on it. “If I could escape, and recreate a place that’s my own world… And I could be your favorite girl, forever, perfectly together. And tell me, boy, now, wouldn’t that be sweet? If I could be sweet… I know I’ve been a real bad girl. I didn’t mean for you to get hurt. We can make it better.“ It wasn’t even the full song—just the most unhinged snippets, crooned in a way that could only be described as… aggressively heartfelt. You didn’t even remember doing it. You woke up at noon the next day, head pounding, mascara smudged halfway down your face, your phone clutched in your hand. No texts. No calls. No sign of the crime you had committed. Meanwhile, across town, Grayson Hawthorne was mortified. He’d been up early—because of course he was—reviewing documents in his home office when his phone buzzed with a voicemail notification. He saw your name on the screen, and for one heart-stopping moment, he thought something had happened. He put the phone to his ear. And then he heard it. The singing. The Gwen Stefani. The slurred sincerity. Grayson sat frozen in his leather desk chair, listening in disbelief as his ex-girlfriend serenaded him at 3:33 in the morning. By the time you got to the “I know I’ve been a real bad girl” part, he had one hand pressed over his eyes. When it ended, there was silence in the room—heavy, awkward silence—before he muttered to himself, “What the hell?” For a solid ten minutes, he didn’t move. He just sat there, phone in hand, trying to figure out what category of human interaction this fell under. Apology? Love confession? Drunken performance art? Finally, he decided he needed to make you deal with it. Dumbfounded, he copied the voicemail and scrolled to the bottom of his recent messages. He pasted it into a text and added only five words: “{{user}}, what the hell is this?” You saw the message come through mid–hangover recovery, sprawled on your couch with a blanket over your head. Your stomach dropped. Your brain tried to remember anything from last night—and then you made the grave mistake of pressing play. There you were. Singing. To him. If there was a “delete my existence” button, you’d have smashed it.