#record player.

GOODBYE. ( russ )

When Jerome first heard Marie cheated on him, he saw red. Everything he so holy believed in crumbled down like brittle stone in those hallways he called home. How could she. How dared she. After everything. After all the painful secrets he whispered in the night, the long talks about how much he wanted to be wanted, how she promised to want him for everything he is, to love him for it. From the eyes he used to be bullied for all the way down deep to the soul that so eagerly awaited the love of his life. He had hit Hugo with such force he almost broke his nose and he was ready to do so much more if he wasn’t pulled off of him. Pathetic. Hugo was pathetic to use her against him, as a trophy he discarded just to one up the offer of a lifetime. ( the detail he went into as to how she moaned his name, oh, Jerome could’ve broken him. ) But he was just complicit in the crime, an accomplice who was deserving of a punishment just not as brutal as reserved for the main culprit. So he walked after getting kicked out. Just deafening silence was there when she ran up to him, her eyes wide after he found out her little secret and removed the sterling necklace from the slender neck he used to whisper sweet nothings to before kissing the sweet skin. His fingers brushed over her skin as he took off the jewelry and he swore she felt cold to the touch but burned like thousand flames then. It was the way he told her she was a worthless whore that left that being worse than the bleeding Hugo had to endure. He said it like she was the ugliest person in the world. He said it like those two years meant nothing. He said it with so much venom lacing his gaze that even a snake wouldn’t come near him. Yet, the words fell so hollow and empty, void of whatever curled around his words usually when talking to her. And he left her then, necklace in hand and back turned to never see her again. 

What’s most painful is that he could’ve seen the warning signs. He remembered her friend Hyuna looking at him in pity, like he was another victim. He remembered her saying he was too cute for this when they were stuck in Marie’s apartment for awhile before running her fingers through his hair. He remembered how confused he was before he heard the door unlock and the familiar voice that was like an angels choir called out a “Hyuna, Romeo, I grabbed lunch on the way!” ( he remembered how fast he stood up from the couch to kiss her when she questioned him if something happened when she was gone all the while a smirk decorated her lips. he missed the way her eyes rolled when he told her he could never and that he loved her. hyuna just sighed. ) but he loved her so much that he was blinded by any voice that told him to stop. 

A few months later he found himself shouting into his phone when Marie called him and he broke. It didn’t help he was drunk ( which freddy warned khaled for but khaled just thought getting drunk with his friend might loosen him up a bit, get him less stressed. ) and so agitated with the voice on the other side not even apologizing. He asked her how many others she fucked. He asked her different things I won’t repeat because they are cruel, but he never asked her “How could you do this to me?” like he wanted to. She never got the chance to answer him for Khaled hit the phone out of his hand and they ended up fighting for a while before he eventually cried against his shoulder.

I believe the original song is really about a woman the singer, Russ, dated and that she was a prostitute, but, I felt the anger and disdain resonated.

Also I can see the “Paul” character resonating with Jerome, like in broad lines he is talking to himself. That he was just a puppy on a leash, that he loved but he was just so engrossed by her allure that he never realized how much of an awful person she was and, in the midst of rage, he would “leave” when he finds more women to have. He’s a loser for falling for her, just like the many others he was blissfully unaware of, and still is.

SOMETHING IN THE WAY. ( jorja smith ) 

After anger comes grief. He thought he could move on. He felt so powerful when he spat the insult in her face but he felt so weak when the car of his teacher brought him home. He still had hope, she was his lover but he left her. He packed his bags and flew to the other side of the world for her. He kicked her out and started a new life as Jerome Gauthier, the roué. Jerome Gauthier, the debauched. Jerome Gauthier, the.. broken. He couldn’t shake her and he hated himself for it. He hated crying in his bed at night, the loneliness of his bed magnified when the body of a beautiful girl grew absent after leaving his apartment. He hated not being able to enjoy his new lifestyle, to get acquainted with the feeling of being wanted solely because his words were smooth like woven silk and his body was like that of a Greek God. He hated missing her, missing the way her head laid upon his chest in the dead of night when he decided to stay over at her place, not noticing the way her nose scrunched up when he mumbled another loving word to her seemingly sleeping frame before falling in a slumber himself. Because he knows she’s living life, he isn’t as confident as he seems to be. He knew she wasn’t mourning the death of their relationship, matter of fact she might have even been under another guy the second he left. 

And he tries to bargain with himself now, good things don’t last. They follow the way of the wind, rush through his hair, tickle his skin, warm him up before the breeze leaves again. 

“’Cause only the sun in the summer lasts. / Even the sun doesn’t seem to last.”

But does he believe himself?

I FALL APART. ( post malone )

This song is one that fits the most with Jerome’s situation seeing as the raw pain feels very reminiscent of how he feels, how he felt. 

“She told me that I’m not enough.” It was never vocalized but to have chosen this particular suitor to deceit him with solidified a lot of his insecurities, not only physical ones, leaving him broken and scared. “She cut too deep, now she left me scarred.” He’s afraid to enter another relationship because of her, never having it hurt this bad. “And now I’m taking these shots like it’s Novocaine.” Drowning himself in alcohol was a coping mechanism, is a coping mechanism. An escape from the painful reminders that he does not have her, that she broke his heart, that another was better; a meaningless better than everything he did for her, gave her, in the two years of their relationship.

I don’t think I have to go into much detail about this one, the lyrics are very self explanatory. But just a fun fact. this was the song that I had on loop during the writings of “Feeling like I sold my soul.” and will continue to loop as I write “Devil in the form of a whore.”

EYES NOSE LIPS. ( tablo, taeyang )

He wants her to leave his life but she keeps returning to him and he knows she’ll never fade. Even when he escaped to Korea she was on his mind and when he finally felt happy for once she came crashing into his life again as he viewed her pretty face on a billboard in the heart of Seoul. He remembered the way his heart dropped all the way to his feet, shattering like fine china, whilst his eyes just stared so intensely out of the window of the car like he witnessed a car crash before the driver passed the ghost of his past. 

He wants to move on so badly but it feels like she keeps cutting the wings of time. The wound never heals, just when it seems like it is she shows up again, prettier than the day before and with more intent behind whatever she would do to him next. Even when the feeling of falling in love slowly coaxes him to sew the pieces back together she comes in with a pair of scissors to cut the threads, telling him “No. You remember me, still. Compare them to me. All of them.” and he does, comparing them all. Except- ah, Tokyo was an interesting time.

FUCK LOVE. ( xxxtentacion ft. trippie redd )

There had been a part of him that wanted her back, a twisted part yearning for the days when he still had her. “I want her to wish she still had me inside of her.” was something he whispered between heavy breathing whilst having sex with one of her friends ( which was a really stupid thing to do, say that. not to mention doing her friend. ah, that wasn’t the smartest decision he has made. ) and every time she popped up at industry events as the beautiful model she was, this tiny voice got him craving her. Yet, heartbreak was so much stronger. It gnawed at him like some kind of starving animal as he watched her laugh so agonizingly beautiful with friends before he dove away to the nearest bathroom just to regain his composure. Just to remain being Yuddy.

One time he cried in a bathroom, silent and lonely in the earlier days of his career. Someone caught him upon exiting, eyes kissed an irritated red as he made a beeline straight to the exit, leaving the event sooner than he had liked. 

BITTER FUCK. ( joji )

He changed because of her, he treats the girls he’s with badly because of her,  he feels lost because of her. People around him see him as what she made him out to be, an asshole behind the scenes. Someone people don’t want to grow close to, that is, if they don’t want to dig for something more. Brush the dirt away, get your hands dirty, scoop out the earth and find someone that loves such simple things like staying indoors or cooking for a loved one. Find someone who is passionate about so much more than just his music, just his craft. But that’s so deep down, who wants to take the effort? One did.

Maybe he shouldn’t blame her entirely, there is always a part of him that could just start over. That part is so small, though, and so terrifying.

EX CALLING. ( 6lack )

After Tokyo she kept pestering him, like she was daring him to do something about it. She played up the rumours of them dating with cryptic instagram posts and sharing songs of Jerome so casually with little hearts attached to it. She even left a message, one that almost made him drop his phone when he checked his twitter dm’s “Romeo, let’s talk again.” let’s talk again. It was in such contrast with the other messages he got from exes that he left behind in France who now wanted to holler at him as he grew famous, because hers had some unknown intent behind it. He doesn’t know why she does it. He doesn’t know why she feels the need to reach out to him in these ways. He knows she doesn’t miss him, she made that clear but what then? He tries to be dismissive, just like the laid back mood of the song, but it’s hard to.

Especially when her presence in his life is so crucial right now.

AYALA. ( xxxtentacion )

Reminiscent of the days, he regrets even meeting her in the first place. He could pinpoint what should’ve happened for him to never have ran into her. Stay back at the apartment as Freddy and Khaled went out to buy food in their hungover state, enroll a year or two later in school to focus on his music or even enroll into a rivaling film academy he’d been eyeing too, maybe never moving to Paris in the first place but staying put in the homely house of his grandfather in Laval, study something else, go somewhere else. All these things to never have to feel what he felt now. There was something toxic about the relationship they had, with him relying too much on her as he drowned her in affection whilst she saw other men during the brief parts they were separated. It was that infatuation that fed it, that building her up like she was a piece of marble and he spend years carving out every feature only to fall in love with it when it was complete. And it was that infatuation that ruined it, too.

DEMONS. ( joji )

Jerome is nearing his breaking point but he tries very hard to keep his cool. He’s behaving himself even though she keeps pushing him and pushing him to do something.  “Please just let me go.” alludes to me that he wants her to allow him the escape of moving on. He’s in love but can’t love because of her ( the demons are taking his heart ) she almost ruined things between Julien and him in an already fragile time. They fought because of her. And he just warns her to stop, to have her stop messing with his life and just have him escape her so he could be lonely but not alone, so he could love from a distance,  just. She needs to let him go, he’s seen enough.

THAT FEELING. ( russ )

“I was ready for you, you weren’t ready for me.” It’s a realization he needs to have. He was on a different level when it came to their relationship, he might have thought about asking her hand after graduating school making him the first to be engaged out of their friendship instead of Khaled, he might have suggested living together if she followed him to Korea to have him pursue his songwriter career, he might have seen a future for them. She might have seen him as security for no one would run around for her like he did, she might have liked the stark contrast between the loving words whispered by the man she promised to love versus the filthy profanities thrown at her by the men she promised to lust, she might have seen a future for them if her charades kept up. 

Drinking himself stupid he tried to numb himself from the pain of loving her, the future he saw before more meaningful due to his situation than just a simple “I love you, I could marry you.”  but as time went on and he met someone new, he started getting drunk for different reasons. “It’s not for you anymore.” Love, she doesn’t own a monopoly on it anymore. He drinks now out of fear ( her fault but not for her. ) it was a strange time when the reasons shifted but he hardly noticed until one fateful day. 

“That feeling, that doesn’t go away just did.” 

CARRY ON. ( xxxtentacion )

Take a trip back to around the ‘13s when she was still a fresh memory of his past, a memory that dug into his chest like sharpened knives, a memory that ruined so many pretty girls for him but a memory nonetheless. He struggled through the days, anger, sadness, desperation, all these emotions consuming the frail man that looked nothing but confident on the outside. The fact that he had to bottle it up was something that ruined him. Nobody could help him, understand him, comfort him - he had no shoulder to cry on. It was himself doing it, but she couldn’t influence his life anymore. If no one knew she could disappear in thin air like a burned up piece of paper as a hedonist formed from the sprawled out ashes that laid on the ground. 

Nights were so cold, but he carried on. Khaled said stupid things like “I saw Marie today, in the supermarket, she said hi to me.” which always granted him an elbow in the ribs from a concerned Freddy who would glance at the way Jerome’s face contort in a grimace on screen, like he just witnessed a death, but he carried on. He always carried on, even in the months when a pretty girl called Heera reminded him just too much of his ex and his mind was way too present in the past. Yoonah helped during that, granting him distractions when bodies felt too frightening to touch. It even prompted Frederic to cryptically try and ask if he was starting to move on, but his words fell silent when Khaled jumped in with a “She’s hotter than Marie, that Yoonah girl, that’s for sure.” and he noticed Jerome’s face fall just upon hearing her name. But he carried on.  

“How did you get here? I’m drunk and confused. I try to be patient with you.”

Return to the present. Or, 2015 till the present. She could’ve gone anywhere in the world, but she ended up in Seoul, South Korea. Never did he hear her wish to become a model even when her friend Hyuna visited and told her she could totally work in the same branch as her. She could’ve been anywhere on October 16th, but she ended up in Tokyo, Japan, lips pressed to an ear as a familiar nickname rolled off her tongue. Never did he think he could keep his resolve, and he almost didn’t, but he tried so hard. His patience ran thin with every word she spoke. And the hotel, ah, he broke. 

But he carried on.

WORLDSTAR MONEY. ( joji )

Self reflection. What he has done to himself isn’t normal. Changing himself to almost a 180 of what he used to be, speaking no words of his past with her, fearing love when opportunities are laid out for him to take. And he knows this. He has had many days were he’s been angry at himself for ruining things, for not letting himself indulge in certain aspects of his life for the sole reason that maybe it would work out, especially now. But he knows the second one would hurt so much more and with who had his affection, he’d loose so much.

“So tenderly you watch me burn.”

Marie seems to enjoy his suffering, and watches from the sidelines as he eats himself up over her. Paparazzi love the drama of BC’s second Casanova chasing down the pretty model and interpret it all wrongly, like a crowd around a fight that started 5 minutes ago. Fans watched him slide off the podium but not before screaming the lyrics that were inspired by her. Others observe nothing but a burning corpse wrapped in a handsome package.