I stare at the blinking light on my phone. That tiny blinking red light that screams and rants and raves … heralding from the rooftop that I have a voice mail from Gracyn. Her text messages have dwindled since we played Dublin.

That last show was different than the rest of the tour. It was cleaner, more visceral. It was the best possible end to a shitshow of a tour. And the closing song … Lord, I don’t know how they did it, but Kane, Ian, and Nate convinced me to play “One” as the final song of the final show in the final city of the tour. And, yeah, something about it felt very final. But it felt completely right.

Since then, I spent a couple of weeks off in the world. Getting lost as much as I could—Iceland, Norway, anywhere cold and dark and remote. I needed time to think about everything. About Gracyn and the way things had started and twisted and shifted and ultimately imploded, going tits up.

While I sit at the bar of Sasha’s restaurant, that blinking light is an ominous presence. It takes up more space than it has any right to.

“Can I have another whiskey? Neat, please,” I ask the bartender as she walks by.

It’s not the same chick from the night I found Gracyn again. I probably shouldn’t even be here out of all the bars in New York City, though Sasha assured me that Brooks had been on the blacklist since Kane and I ran into him here. But still …

I drink my whiskey, look around the cramped dining room, and check my phone again. That bastard of a light is still blinking, mocking me. I sip at my drink and order some food, hoping the light goes away.

When the bartender delivers my food, she automatically refreshes my drink. “Sasha said to fill you up.”

“Thanks. She busy back there?” I wanted to be close to family. I probably should have gone home to Virginia to see my parents, but I’m here instead. Maybe Virginia was too far from where I really wanted to be.

“Slammed. You need something else?” the bartender asks, running her fingers through the short black hair framing high cheekbones and dark, almost black eyes. She’s pretty but not my thing.

I glance down, and the light is still blinking happily away, reminding me of who is my thing.

“Nah, I’m good. Actually, can I get this to go?” I pull my wallet out and peel off some bills. Finishing my whiskey in one swallow, I tuck the cash under my empty glass and nod a thank-you as I grab my boxed food and head out into the night.

My mind is made up. That blinking light is going to have to get bent. But there’s really only one place I can go to listen to her message.

The cab ride up there is short enough to almost make it silly, but snow is falling steadily, and as it is, I’m well aware that I’m risking freezing my balls off to do this.

“Thanks, man. You have a good night.”

Snow blankets the entrance to Central Park, muffling the sound of my footfalls. The weather doesn’t make a shit of difference in the city that never sleeps. The bustle of the city barely dims until I’m in the park, heading straight toward my bench near Strawberry Fields. It’s been months since I was here, almost a lifetime ago.

As I weave my way back to the quiet spot where I wrote “One,” unknowingly singing it to Gracyn as we sat back-to-back, I see a man wrapped in what amounts to little more than rags, shuffling his way out of the park.

“Here you go. Dinner’s on me.” I hand him the boxed-up bar food, wishing I had ordered something heartier, more substantial to offer.

He meets my eye and hits me with a, “Thank you,” before moving on.

“Hey,” I call out, stopping him. “Take this, too. I don’t need it.” I hand him my MetroCard and turn back, walking deeper into the park.

Using my boot, I brush the snow from the worn wood of the bench seat and park my ass. My hands are toasty warm in the pockets of my coat, the right one gripping tightly to the phone case. The purple-and-black tiger-striped phone case that I couldn’t seem to resist when I got back stateside and upgraded my phone. The cracked screen is gone, replaced with a brand-new model—and a light that I can practically feel blinking at me.

What the hell am I doing here? In New York, in this park, on this bench. The answer is in the blink. In the insistent red light that, for a change, I can’t find my way to ignore. My hands chill almost instantly as I pull them from my pockets and swipe the screen, finding the voice mail app right there, ready to get this done. I tap at the screen and take a deep breath as Gracyn’s voice floats through the speaker and directly to my heart.

“Hi. Hey, it’s me. I, um … I wanted to call and tell you that I’m sorry … for everything. Just everything. Um, and I know I was kind of relentless, maybe even a pain in the ass while you were on tour, but … okay, yeah, I was totally a pain in the ass, but I just wanted to talk to you, wanted to make you understand.

“I hope that, someday, you can find it in your heart to talk to me again. I love you, Gavin. I don’t know how or when it happened, but I do. I didn’t think I was truly capable, and it’s crazy when I think about the amount of time we’ve spent with each other. Like actually in each other’s presence. It’s pitifully less than a month.

“But, dear God, the discussions we had on the beach, the way you challenged me to reach deep within myself and search for answers to things that really scared me. And all the encouragement you offered. That stuff just came so naturally for you. Jesus, I’ve … I’ve never gotten that.

“Outwardly, my family looks cohesive and supportive, but that’s just an illusion. Something to show the world, and you know—you know—it’s all fake. God, I envy Bryan and his disappearing act. I felt like I had to make up for what my dad thought of as Bry’s deficiency. And, Lord, my mother. Maybe, someday, she’ll find it in her to just tell my dad to fuck right off because he has not slowed down in the least.

“Gavin, I wish I could talk to you. I miss you. I miss the way you look at situations like this, the way you can delve into it and pick it apart. Lining up the possibilities for inspection, dissection, and then ultimately make sense of the muddled mess.

“Anyway, I just wanted to let you know that I’m sorry. I’m sorry that I gave you the impression that I only wanted to have fun. That I wasn’t committed. That I was anything less than you deserved. I’m sorry that, for as strong and badass as I like to think I am, I totally missed the way Brooks had manipulated things with us. The way my dad had engineered shit with Brooks and me. And I know—God, I know—no matter how many times I apologize, no matter how many ways I say it, I can never … never, ever apologize enough for that fight, the charges, the way my dad had you thrown into jail. Shit, did you know he’s best friends with the magistrate of Beekman Hills? That it was my dad who kept you from going up for your preliminary hearing. Gavin, I … I’m so sorry. So, so sorry.

“Shit, I didn’t mean to ramble away like this. I meant to just … just let you know how bad I feel. How I can never make it up to you. And …”

She sighs, obviously considering the rest of what she’s going to say.

“And that you’re my one, too. That’s the song, right? The one from Central Park? That feels like a million years ago and a thousand miles away. I wish I could go back, Gavin. Just go back to the beach … to that bench … and do things so differently. I love you.”

With the final words ricocheting around in my brain, I tilt my head back, staring up at the sky. The falling snow tickles, caressing my nose and cheeks and lips, like her voice reaching deep and invading my heart.