Emma Heatherington - Rewrite the Stars

Dublin, December 2010

I was twenty-two years and nine months old when I first fell in love with Tom Farley.

Elbow-deep in a sink full of suds in our student kitchen, I watched him come in through the back door with my brother Matthew, steal my heart on his way past with his old-school, movie-star-type swagger and I knew my life was never going to be the same again.

My mother used to joke about how I was born cynical, and I was definitely way too sceptical to believe in love at first sight, but this person’s very presence hit me like a bolt of lightning.

He turned my head like no other man had done before, and like none would ever do again.

Tom Farley, with his mega-watt smile, tousled brown hair, dark stubble on a chiselled jawline, the cheekiest dimples you ever did see and bold, devilish eyes of turquoise green, made me weak at the knees. Maybe the attraction was in knowing he was musical, like me. Maybe it was his rugged, ruffled, rough-round-the-edges good looks, or maybe love at first sight did exist and I was now living proof and the latest victim of the old cliché.

Whatever it was, I found myself instantly hooked.

‘What on earth are you wearing?’ my brother Matthew snorted, clearly showing off in front of his new friend. Matthew didn’t have much room to talk when it came to fashion. He was sporting a pair of lilac spray-on jeans with a hideous see-through lemon linen shirt that clashed with his cranberry-coloured hair. Between the two of us, we certainly looked like the circus had come to town.

I glared out the window onto a red brick wall that divided our terraced house from an identical row behind us, turned down James Blunt who was aptly singing his number one hit ‘You’re Beautiful’ and desperately thought of something smart to say in return, but my head was too busy spinning with unadulterated lust.

I was speechless.

My glow-in-the-dark Disney-themed pyjamas with Doctor Marten boots at three in the afternoon was all a bit of an eyesore, but I was a student, on my day off, and how the hell was I to know that the man of my ultimate dreams would pass me by in a whiff of leather and tobacco when I was dressed like a clown?

Yes, Tom Farley, with his air of beauty and superstardom, had just rocked my world and I couldn’t wait to see what happened next, so I ignored my fashion crisis, took a deep breath and dried my hands quickly to go and take a closer look at him.

‘Stick the kettle on, will you Charlie?’ said Matthew when I reached the tiny sitting room where it looked like they were about to set up office. He called me Charlie, which meant he was really showing off now. No one ever called me Charlie. No one was ever allowed to call me Charlie.

I gulped and tried to compose myself in front of this absolute hunk of burning love who was now looking at me just as eagerly as I was at him. Late twenties, I guessed, no wedding ring which was a good start and, despite his bourbon rock-star looks, he had an air of shyness mixed with an inner confidence that made him all the more attractive. I could feel his eyes burn through me, so I looked around the room instead of directly at him to try to keep my cool.

‘Well, I would stick the kettle on, but I was just about to go—’

‘Where?’

Nowhere was the answer. I was about to go nowhere but there was no way I was going to be treated as the tea lady in this whole operation without a proper introduction.

A heap of vinyl with names I’d never heard of was stacked in the middle of the brown carpet, the room stank of stale, spilt beer and weed, while a cactus plant we’d named Jarvis Cocker (because it had prickles) looked as gloomy as the winter weather outside, but Tom Farley brightened up everything in my dull-as-dishwater world. Who was he? Why was he here? My brother was in the process of forming some sort of new age rock band, so I gathered they were here to talk business.

‘I’m OK for tea, thank you … Aren’t you going to introduce us, Matt?’ asked the dreamboat on the sofa and my mouth dropped open when I heard his voice for the first time.

He had the most delicious, gravelly, deep American-Irish accent, which sounded so deeply mysterious in comparison to my own plain old Irish twang. This man, this absolutely gorgeous being, was becoming more appealing by the second.

‘Oh, sorry, this is Tom Farley, our drummer in Déjà Vu,’ said Matthew, finally remembering his manners. ‘He’s probably the best drummer in Dublin.’

Probably the best- looking drummer in Dublin, I’d have added to that sentence, not that I knew many drummers in Dublin or anywhere else for that matter.

Tom held up his hands in a display of modesty.

‘Tom, this is my sister, Charlotte. The bossy baby of the house I was telling you about,’ said Matthew.

I nodded a hello, not knowing whether to thump my brother for calling me bossy, even though it was him telling me to ‘stick the kettle on’, or to hug him for bringing this piece of heaven into my life. Then I stuttered out a proper hello and giggled in a girly way that made me want to thump myself .

‘Nice boots,’ said Tom the drummer, looking me up and down. ‘Snap.’

He pulled up his faded blue jeans ever so slightly to show off identical cherry-coloured Doc Martens and my heart sang. It was destiny. It had to be. He ran his fingers through his tousled hair. I may have swooned out loud. I clenched my own empty fingers, wishing they could touch his hair, too.

‘We’re holding a meeting here shortly,’ said Matthew, clearing his throat. ‘You know, about the new band?’

‘Ah, that’s right,’ I said as if I’d forgotten. As if I could forget. Matthew had talked about nothing else except ‘the new band’ for months now and had been scouring every avenue for the right talent to join him. ‘Is there anything I can do to help, apart from make tea?’

Matthew looked at me wide-eyed.

‘Er, no .’

I knew this was code for ‘Piss away off, sister, or just get the drinks in’, but I wasn’t taking the hint.

‘You know, I always wanted to play the drums, ever since I saw the gorilla in the chocolate ad banging out the beats to that Phil Collins song,’ I sighed, leaning on the doorframe. I even pouted a little. Boy, I hadn’t flirted like this since forever.

Tom laughed, in an endearing way.

‘And Larry Mullen Junior from U2, of course,’ I added, trying to redeem myself. ‘He’s a really good, um, drummer too.’

Matthew was gritting his teeth. ‘I didn’t know you wanted to play the drums, Charlotte,’ he replied swiftly. He seriously looked like he was going to throw something at me now.

‘I do,’ I lied, knowing I was really pushing the boundaries at this stage. ‘Do you teach drumming, Tom?’

Tom was still staring back at me, smiling, his chest moving up and down, and I knew for sure now, as much as my brother was about to kill me for my blatant flirting, that Tom liked me as much as I liked him. He slid out of his heavy jacket and I gulped at the sight of his tanned, toned arms under a khaki green T-shirt, his gaze never leaving mine with a smile that made my stomach do a backflip.

‘I could certainly try to, er, teach you,’ he said, and his voice cracked a little when he spoke. ‘So, you’re the budding songwriter then? Matthew was telling me that you—’

I was just preparing my response when we were both ever so rudely interrupted.

‘I was telling you she writes country songs about men in Stetsons who drink too much beer and break too many hearts,’ said Matthew, clearly put out by the chemistry in the air. ‘She’s not a real —’

‘No, I’m not a real songwriter,’ I said, finishing my brother’s sentence for him. I was evidently embarrassing him with my very presence, so he was doing exactly the same in return as Tom shifted in his seat, watching us battle it out in front of him. We would row about this later.