Taylor Swift and John Mayer Nearly Cross Paths at Paul McCartney Concert

Saturday night at the Fonda Theatre in Hollywood, Taylor Swift worked the room with Olivia Rodrigo while John Mayer mingled separately with guests at Paul McCartney's intimate, star-studded concert. The two exes never crossed paths directly. Swift made sure of it: she slipped out through a different exit than Mayer, sidestepping what would have been one of the more uncomfortable celebrity encounters of the year.

TMZ, which obtained photos of the near-miss, reported the two were romantically linked back in 2009, when Swift was 19 and Mayer was 32. Their history has never entirely faded from public view, and Saturday's McCartney show at the Fonda put them under the same roof with nowhere obvious to hide.

The concert drew a sprawling guest list that included Stevie Nicks, Margot Robbie, Billie Eilish, Ringo Starr, Reese Witherspoon, Sabrina Carpenter, Harrison Ford, Anthony Kiedis, and Steven Tyler, among dozens of others. Nicks' presence carried its own quiet irony: Mayer had once compared Swift to the Fleetwood Mac icon in an MTV interview ahead of his 2009 album Battle Studies, on which Swift collaborated.

The proximity of these two at the Fonda lands differently given the long paper trail of their falling-out. After Swift reportedly wrote "Dear John" in the wake of their brief relationship, Mayer gave a pointed interview to Rolling Stone in 2012 that left little ambiguity about how he felt. "I never got an e-mail. I never got a phone call," Mayer said at the time. "I was really caught off guard, and it really humiliated me at a time when I'd already been dressed down." He added: "I mean, how would you feel if, at the lowest you've ever been, someone kicked you even lower?"

That Rolling Stone interview set off its own wave of awkwardness. Within a day of its publication, the two found themselves at Tower Bar in West Hollywood simultaneously. A witness told the New York Post that when Swift spotted Mayer, she asked, very loudly, to be moved to the other side of the restaurant. "The bar's usually an oasis of calm and privacy for celebrities and power players," the witness said. "But this was drama central."

Saturday's exit strategy at the Fonda suggests the intervening years have not made these encounters any more comfortable. Swift, who spent part of the night photographed alongside Rodrigo, apparently calculated her departure with the same precision she brings to most things in her professional life. Mayer stayed. Swift found a different door.