From the album Wishbone
This is about addiction to the exact person who damaged you. Gray frames the ex as caramel, something that literally only exists through controlled burning, and the metaphor isn't accidental. The longer he lets it sit, the more he convinces himself the damage was actually sweetness.
Well, in the moment, you weren't all that kind / You with your wide-eyed grin's all I can see when I think of that time
He admits the ex was cruel in real time, then immediately replaces that truth with a sensory flash of their face. The grin overwrites the unkindness. This is how memory protects what hurts you.
And no one believed me, you gaslighted feelings / 'Til you had me thinking that I was the reason that I was fucking losing my mind
Gray names the specific harm but can't sustain anger about it. The verse sprints through the gaslighting accusation to get back to wanting them. He's not processing the betrayal, he's cataloging it as context for why he still wants them back.
And the longer burn, the sweeter that you smell / You caramel, you're caramel
Caramel is sugar destroyed by heat until it tastes better. Gray picked a metaphor where the appeal requires damage, and he doesn't seem to notice that what he's calling sweetness is the product of burning. The extended cooking time isn't healing, it's him romanticizing the harm.
I want you back now and we're making out / Drunk, sleeping on my couch / Now when I hear you're in town, I just want caramel
He collapses present desire and imagined reunion into the same tense, like the fantasy is already happening. The couch appears twice in the song, first as the ex ignoring him at parties, now as the site of their return. He's rewriting the same space.
It was love at the worst / It was what we deserved
This is the only moment where Gray implicates himself, and he does it so fast you almost miss it. 'What we deserved' spreads the blame, but the song never shows him doing anything wrong. He's using the language of mutual toxicity to avoid calling this what it is.
Gray built the whole song on a metaphor that exposes him. Caramel doesn't exist without heat breaking sugar down, and he's the one still applying the flame. He thinks he's describing how memory works, but he's actually showing how you can talk yourself into craving the thing that hurt you if you just keep the temperature high enough.