Due to a twist of fate — or maybe just an agent of chaos managing Sabrina Carpenter‘s VIP seating chart — Katy Perry and John Mayer wear seated near each other at the 25-year-old pop star’s Short n’ Sweet Tour stop in Los Angeles on Sunday night.
As captured in a clip circulating on social media, the two exes — who dated on and off for almost three years in the 2010s — crossed paths at the Kia Forum when the “Your Body Is Wonderland” musician filed into a row of seats directly behind the former American Idol judge. As soon as Perry saw him, her face froze in hilarious shock before she grabbed the railing in front of her, bowing her head to momentarily regroup.
She then turned around and kindly offered up her arm for a handshake, which Mayer reciprocated. Another video taken later showed the former flames conversing over the bustle of the arena.
After the show, Perry shared photos she snapped with the “Espresso” singer backstage, as well as a photo of the “Roar” artist posing with her nieces. “soooo @sabrinacarpenter show was too short but so sweet,” she wrote on Instagram. “Thanks for solidifying my FUNTIE status with my nieces & for playing my fave song ‘Lie to Girls’ IT JUST KILLS ME CAUSE IT FEELS LIKE YOUVE READ EVERY GIRLS DIARY WRITING THAT SONG.”
Perry has been with her current partner Orlando Bloom since 2016, and the couple welcomed daughter Daisy in 2020. Mayer keeps a low profile but was recently rumored to be seeing actress Kiernan Shipka.
After first getting together in 2012, the two musicians split for good around 2015 — two years after collaborating on “Who You Love” from Mayer’s Paradise Valley and “It Takes Two” from Perry’s Prism. In 2017, Perry paid Mayer a slightly NSFW compliment by ranking his love-making capabilities first over both Diplo and, ironically, Bloom during a four-day livestream ahead of her album Witness.
And a few months before that, Mayer implied that he wasn’t done writing love songs about his former flame. Of his song “Still Feel Like Your Man,” he told The New York Times: “Who else would I be thinking about? That was my only relationship. So it’s like, give me this, people.”
