2:45am, and Rayna's back. Alone.
The lights are on now, and the ground feels sticky, and vast amounts of empty glasses clutter every surface. The vibe, in short, is distinctly less magical.
She doesn't really care about any of that, though.
She scans the place, and hardly knows whether to feel relief or dread when she finds that he's one of the few still here. He's snapping his guitar case closed, saying his goodbyes to whoever's disassembling the equipment on stage, and she just watches for a second as he shrugs on his jacket, swings the guitar case over his shoulder.
She can't help but notice that he looks good. As in good. He'd always been pretty fit - the kind of fit that came with being a guy in his twenties who'd done his share of manual labor, hauled his share of amps. Now, it's obvious to her that he's the kind of fit that comes from going to the gym, lifting weights, actually trying in some way.
So, that's new, she thinks.
So distracted is she that, despite all the planning and hypothetsizing with which she'd tortured herself on the whole way back over here, she's somehow caught unawares when he turns. He sees her - stops like a bullet's just hit him - and she feels scarcely any less surprised herself.
"Hi," she blurts out.
Deacon feels his mouth go dry.
"Hi Rayna," he manages, quietly, and her name feels strange - heavy somehow - on his tongue. He hasn't said it out loud in so long. Not to anyone.
"I'm sorry about before," she says, rushing to explain herself. "There was a guy from a magazine here. Doing one of those "day in the life" things or whatever. And, I don't know, I guess I just didn't want him to see you and - I mean, not that he necessarily even would have put it in the article but I think he probably would have and I didn't want-"
She's babbling, she can hear it herself, but she can't stop until:
"Hey," he interrupts, so gently, "I get it."
And there it is again, Rayna thinks, after all this time; that sense that Deacon Claybourne is just fundamentally on her side.
She takes a breath, sighs quietly. How has that managed to survive all this?
"It's good to see you," she offers then simply.
He nods, his eyes soft. "It's good to see you too, Rayna." Because it is. Of course, he's clocked the rings glimmering on her left hand; glutton for punishment that he is, he couldn't resist sneaking a quick glance. But even still, Deacon finds that it is so, so good to see her. Just to be near her. To know at least that when she left earlier, it wasn't because she couldn't bear - or couldn't be bothered - even to speak to him.
He looks around the bar. "Reckon Tom's just about shutting up shop here."
"Right," she says lightly, her eyes darting around the place as well, taking in the last few stragglers, and bartenders busily wiping tables. She suddenly feels a little foolish for having come all the way back here at this hour.
"I guess I wasn't really thinking I ju-"
"Well if you wanted we could-"
They start at the same time, words bumping into each other clumsily until they both jolt to a stop, smiling awkwardly.
After you. No, after you.
Deacon shrugs humbly.
"I mean, my place is pretty close. Like, ten minutes or so. Just…if you want."
"- To talk," he clarifies hurriedly, a half a second later. "If you want to talk."
And of course, he's her ex-boyfriend - a term that, in fact, has always seemed to Rayna almost laughably flimsy, but she supposes is accurate. It's almost 3am in the morning. Teddy would have a conniption if he knew.
The easy thing, Rayna thinks later - the understandable, believable, slightly-less-unflattering thing - would be to convince herself that these considerations just did not occur to her, in the moment.
The truth is that, in the moment, they do occur to her. She simply finds that she doesn't care a bit about any of them.