AS REAGAN PULLED up to Big Apple Sounds, she noticed straightaway how gorgeously placed the studio was. Sitting directly beneath the expanse of the Hollywood Hills, she admired Jesse for having chosen such a far-flung spot away from the ritzy mansions dotting the horizon behind it. To get there, she'd practically had to go off-roading down a dirt path that had had her car jerking up and down. It would have been easy to get lost if not for directions she'd jotted down a slip of paper.

She got out of the car, pushing her sunglasses up onto her head as she surveyed the building. It was a lot smaller than most of the recording studios she'd seen in Los Angeles, just barely big enough for the three main rooms it was meant to contain. It had obviously gone through a severe overhaul, likely having undergone months of renovation. The beige paint coating it was set off nicely by the shrubby green flora and fauna surrounding it. In the distance, the Hollywood sign caught the glare from the sun and shimmered.

The heavy, wooden front door to the studio opened and Jesse walked out, grinning ear to ear. Reagan mimicked his smile as he jogged his way over to her, scuffing up dust from the ground in the process.

"Hey!" he said enthusiastically, wrapping her in a quick hug. She squeezed him back and grabbed her sunglasses before they slid off of her head.

"It's good to see you again," she greeted him, feeling exhilarated to be in the presence of someone she'd never thought she'd see after their one chance, second meeting nearly three years ago. He took a step back to admire her, as if checking to ensure that she was really there.

"I'm glad you were able to make it out here. I know it was kind of weird, asking you to come."

Jesse's proposal that they meet up at his studio hadn't bothered Reagan in the slightest. The choice of a meeting spot made it easier for her to pretend that she was there on business and not to hang out alone with a man that wasn't Dave, a pest of a personal problem that she couldn't overcome.

"Not at all," she assured him. "It worked out perfectly. Gracie's at a friend's house this weekend."

"Awesome." Jesse was radiant, reminding Reagan of someone much younger than he must have actually been. He even looked rather boyish in his rumpled Flaming Lips shirt and jeans, which were, of course, torn at the knees. His motorcycle boots were much like the pair she'd worn every day straight in her youth and it made her smile to think that they at least had taste in clothing in common.

"I'll show you around," he said, gesturing that she follow him. Inside the studio, they were met with a blast of cool air conditioning that was a relief from the beaming L.A. sun. Reagan set her bag down on a chair situated by the front door, taking the chance to look around.

"Jesse, this looks amazing," she said in earnest. The interior of the studio was beautiful, decorated in shades of black and red. Even the boxy little lounge that they stood in had character, complete with a round table in the middle that was stacked high with music magazines.

"It's my attempt at being a professional," he said bashfully, resting his hands on his hips and glancing around the room. "This isn't even the coolest part, though."

"I didn't think so."

Reagan followed Jesse through a corridor that led to the studio's control room. She'd seen plenty of them before during her time with Dave and this one didn't appear any different, but she showed the proper level of excitement for Jesse's sake.

"You know what you're doing with all that?" she asked, nodding at the control panel that was littered with various knobs and buttons.

"On a good day, yes," he grinned. "I've gotten the hang of it, I think."

She snorted at his modesty. "Apparently you have if you're working with the likes of Nine Inch Nails."

A layer of quiet settled over them, allowing for unwarranted time that Reagan spent thinking about what she was truly doing. Their distinct aloneness together was coming into greater clarity, helped along by the shy glances that Jesse was sneaking at her. When he tucked back a piece of his hair behind his ear, she thought of Dave once having done the same thing and it made her stomach hurt.

Jesse unknowingly averted the crisis of her panic when he spoke again, pointing to the windowed live room across from the control panel.

"Wanna' go in?" he asked.

"Sure," Reagan said quickly. There couldn't have been anything in the live room that she wasn't already accustomed to seeing in even her own house, but at least it would keep the two of them talking. Maybe then she wouldn't speculate on whether or not what they were doing could be considered a date.

"My buddy, the one I told you about, pretty much provided me with all of this stuff," Jesse said, talking a mile a minute as he pushed open the door to the live room and walked through it backwards. "I chipped in of course, but I wouldn't have shit if it wasn't for-,"

Before he could finish his sentence, he tripped over a cymbal stand, backing right into it. The cymbals clanged together loudly and with a blushing face, Jesse hurried to regain his balance and steady the stand. Reagan noticed that his hands were slightly shaking as he did so.

"Sorry," he mumbled, avoiding her eyes and forcing an embarrassed smile that revealed an effort to redeem his clumsiness.

Reagan bit her bottom lip as she smiled back, amused by his display of nerves. It wasn't every day that someone managed to make her feel like she was worth getting anxious over.

"It wasn't your fault," she said through a soft laugh. "That cymbal stand bumped into you first."

"I guess it did."

Jesse stood straight and tucked his hands into his pockets, facing her. Silence found them again, but Reagan took it as a moment to study his face, trying to discern what she liked so much about it. It could have been his dimpled smile, or the bright blue of his eyes. His features were intriguing, too, completed with a long nose and oval face that was round enough to look perpetually innocent. He looked so young that Reagan almost questioned if he was actually the twenty-something year old he was mathematically supposed to be.

"Jesse, how old are you?" she asked curiously, unable to not propose the question.

He looked taken aback, somewhere close to both worried and curious as he processed what he'd been asked. "Twenty-nine. Why? How old are you?"

She wanted to giggle, imagining the tenor of whatever thoughts were racing through his brain.

"Forty-five," she answered breezily. As his mouth opened in shock and he knit his eyebrows together, no doubt trying to make sense of how that was possible, Reagan laughed. "I just turned thirty-one on the ninth."

"Damn. I thought I was going crazy there, for a sec. Happy late birthday, by the way."

"What, you didn't figure out my birthday after you figured out my office phone number?"

She wasn't trying to further embarrass him, but at the same time, she was. If she was going to be spending even an iota of time with him, Reagan wanted to get to the crux of the reason as to why Jesse was so interested in her. Those days, she had reason to be cautious.

It wasn't like she was strutting around the streets of L.A., single and childless. She had a history that paled in comparison to the wide berth of women in California who were younger than she and with less baggage to their name. If any man was going to be persistent with her, she was going to question him as to why.

There were unfortunate motivations for men to desire getting close to her. It wasn't like it had once been back in the early nineties, when guys like Tommy had pined for at Wilson's for the sake of her simply being there and over the simplistic reason that they'd been brought up within the limits of the same town.

She had money of her own, now. She was by no means basking in it, but she was well off. She was also the divorced wife of someone famous, someone with connections and wealth.

Reagan didn't want to be used. Even though she inherently trusted Jesse, she couldn't understand his interest in her in the sense that it had spanned for so long as she herself had forgotten all about him.

Predictably, Jesse flushed pink in the face and reached a hand behind his neck, rubbing it.

"I promise I wasn't stalking you," he said.

"I don't think that you stalked me. I'm just surprised that you went to the extreme that you did to keep . . . liking me all these years."

He offered her a small shrug, shaking his head and fixing his eyes to the floor.

"You saw me," he said quietly.

Reagan laughed lightly at the obviousness of the statement. "Yeah, of course I saw you. I watched your band play. You were with me in New York that night."

"No, I mean, you vouched for me. And the band. None of us ever thought we'd be shit until you came along, pressuring the label to sign us. It was flattering."

"I was just doing my job."

"But you were good at your job. When you argued to get us signed, you expressed how much you cared about music without ever actually saying it. I was impressed by you. It was attractive, seeing someone else appreciate the thing that had basically saved my life. Plus, you're not exactly, um . . . ugly."

He cracked an apologetic smile at that one, miffed over the right way to compliment her appearance, and Reagan gave him a small smile of thanks in return.

"It's still a long time to hold out for someone," she pointed out.

"It wasn't for me. I swear, no one gives anybody a fucking chance in this world. People are getting faker every day, but you were never that. I knew from the start that I wanted to know you, whether it was as a friend or . . ."

Jesse trailed off, clearly not wanting to broach that subject with her when her hesitation to go near it was already apparent. She sighed, looking away towards the rows of glossy guitars propped in the corner.

"It's not a good idea, Jesse," she said. "I . . . just got divorced. I've got a daughter and she's the most important thing in my life. To be honest with you, I don't know when she'll be ready to see me with someone else. I like you too, and you're the first guy I even feel comfortable saying that about, but I don't know if I can give you what you want."

"You can't be my friend?" Jesse's question was wholly innocent as he asked it, filled with a genuine concern that didn't mask an ulterior motive.

Reagan's eyes flickered to his. "Of course I can be your friend."

"Good. That's all I want. I want to be friends."

She believed him, but it was undeniable to her that a part of him wanted more. It may have been clear that he wasn't after with bad intent, that his conscious was squeakier clean than most, but Jesse failed miserably at hiding his attraction to her. It was palpable even in the air, and though it was natural and sweet, it wasn't something that Reagan could encourage herself to reach out and grab.

Not yet.

"Hey," Jesse said, redirecting the conversation. "You still play the drums, right?"

"Barely," she said through a scoffing laugh. She glanced at the Yamaha kit set up in the center of the room. "That's a beautiful set you've got there, though."

"Will you play them for me?"

"Huh?"

Jesse smiled yet another bashful smile, ducking his head before locking eyes with her again.

"I'll record you playing them," he offered, gesturing to the control panel behind the glass.

"Why waste the tape?" Reagan asked, scrunching her nose.

"I bet you're better than you say."

"The walls of my house would disagree."

"Come on. I'd love to do it for you. Consider it a late birthday gift."

She laughed, finding it ridiculous that she'd ever want a recording of her shoddy drum playing. It wouldn't see the light of the day once it had been given to her. To Reagan, her skills had waned in correlation with her age.

"You think I'd ever listen back to it?" she asked in disbelief.

"You might," Jesse persisted. "When you're all old and decrepit and your hands don't work because of arthritis and you never pick up a pair of sticks again, you might want to give it a listen."

"Wow, thanks," she said sarcastically. "Hearing that really made me look forward to aging."

"Give it a go. If you suck, I promise I'll tell you." He flashed her a final grin and walked out of the live room door, appearing behind the glass at the control panel. Sliding on a pair of headphones, he gave her an encouraging thumbs up that did little to boost her enthusiasm.

Reagan stared at him, shaking her head at his insistence. When she saw his silent laugh through the glass, she couldn't help but to laugh too, crossing her arms over her chest and feeling suddenly swept into a bright spotlight.

Jesse pointed at the drums and then at another set of headphones resting on the stool behind them. Reluctantly, Reagan slipped them onto her head. She heard his voice in her ears instantly.

"You might as well just do it," he said, chuckling.

"Or what? You're going to lock me in here?"

"Tempting, since you'd never have to leave."

As soon as he said it, realization dawned over his face and he made a show of fiddling with the panel, acting like he'd never said the words at all. Trying to skirt past his boldness, Reagan gave in and sat behind the drum set, reaching for the pair of the sticks that rested on the snare.

"What do you even want me to play?" she asked, hoping that he'd change his mind upon understanding that she was more of a cover-song drummer.

"I dunno'. Just go with it. Come up with something."

"You've overestimated me by a long shot."

Jessie turned his mic off and grinned. In the corner of the room, Reagan saw a red light flash on, indicating that he was recording. A slick sweat broke out across her palms and suddenly, she felt nervous to be in the spot that she'd once found so much comfort in. If Jesse was expecting something legendary out of her playing, he was going to be sorely disappointed.

She rolled the sticks around in her hand, wishing that they were the worn out lucky ones she'd been toting around all of her life. She looked at the set in front of her, scrambling to figure out a beat to start with that wasn't something replicated out of one of her favorite songs.

After fixing a firmer grip onto the sticks and taking a deep breath, Reagan pretended that she was alone in the sanctuary of her home, playing for herself and only herself. She recalled the memory of being a teenager, hammering away on Richard's old kit without a care in the world as to who was listening.

Tentatively, she tapped out a beat on the medium tom, eventually incorporating the high tom and snare into the rhythm. Her foot worked at the kick pedal, pumping it up and down, and she avoided looking through the glass at Jesse as she latched onto the natural flow that had poured from her hands for as long as she could remember.

It took a minute, but Reagan settled on the rhythm she could hear somewhere in the back of her head and tuned her ear to it, moving the sticks accordingly at a quick pace. She played hard at first, before softening the slam of her sticks to something more gentle. Then she picked back up again, banging out a heavy beat, and dialed it down to a more mellow cadence.

She went on like that for awhile, eventually warming up to playing like she always did, bobbing her head and letting her creativity flow free. For once, she wasn't drumming to release a drove of pent up sorrow, but because she was having fun in a familiar place behind the set. She even caught herself smiling as she continued, amused by herself when she worked out a beat seamlessly in accordance to what was bouncing around her brain.

When her arms finally grew tired and her calf muscle started to cramp, Reagan finished the impromptu solo jam session off with the tap and shimmer of a cymbal. Her chest rose and fell fast, her breath coming out in short pants, and she set the sticks down before looking towards the control room.

Jesse was looking at her strangely, as if he'd never truly seen her until that very moment. His lips were slightly parted and he leaned so far over the panel that he looked ready to smash through the glass.

Reagan's smile weakened. "What?" she asked, forgetting that he couldn't hear her. "Was it bad?"

When he didn't respond, she impatiently pointed at her headphones. He hurriedly slipped his back on and pushed a button, his deep breath crackling audibly into her ears.

"I told you it was going to be bad," she said haughtily, even though privately, she thought she'd done pretty well.

Jesse shook his head, a slow smile spreading across his face. His silence irked Reagan even more.

"What?" she demanded. "What are you smirking at?"

He looked up at her, their eyes meeting through the glass for one long, drawn out moment. When he spoke, his voice was thickly filled with awe.

"Reagan," he said, "you're fucking amazing."

a/n:
All I can say is that I promise this isn't turning into a Jesse/Reagan story, for anyone that might be disappointed an or worried by this chapter. Dave will be back ☻