There’s something between Charlotte Taylor and her brother’s best friend, Tom Farley.
In fact, it’s been there from the moment they met that one December day. But Tom’s already taken – and Charlie quickly realises she has to let him go.
It’s another five years before their paths cross again only a secret from the past forces Charlie to make a choice. She promises herself she’ll never look back.
The years pass and Charlie moves on with her life but she can never forget Tom.
He’s always there whispering ‘What if?’. Can Charlie leave the life she has built for one last chance with Tom? Or is the one that got away not really the one at all?
Read an extract from Emma Heatherington’s Rewrite The Stars below.
Dublin, December 2015
Today is my last day of term at St Patrick’s National School, meaning it’s officially the season to be jolly, and jolly I am.
I’ve tinsel round my neck, a Santa hat on my head and I’m celebrating at a local watering hole with some of my favourite people in the world. Life is good.
‘I’ll be right back,’ I say to the gorgeous guy at the bar who is buying me a drink.
With all looking pretty in my humble little world and just enough time to do so before the bar closes, I steal away out the back of the pub for a sneaky cigarette. I don’t normally smoke, but slipping off like this all by myself to do something I know I shouldn’t is as rebellious as my life gets these days.
Pip’s Bar, on a side street near the house that Kirsty and I share in north Dublin, is the type of place you normally wouldn’t drink out of the glass, only the bottle. But with a blanket of snow thick on the ground and the option to skate home and avoid taxis, it’s becoming more and more fun as the beer goes down.
‘Wooo hoo!’ I sing out loud, dancing as I reach for the cigarette in my purse, ignoring a leering look from some dodgy old guy playing a poker machine by the back door.
Being a teacher is fun and fulfilling but on nights like this when school’s out for Christmas, there’s nothing I love more than to cut loose and just be Charlotte Taylor who loves to sing at the top of her voice, instead of ‘Miss Taylor’ who sometimes has to shout at the top of her voice when my seven-year-old pupils get rowdy.
‘Toilets are dat way, me lady,’ says the man at the poker machine in a thick Dublin accent and I hold up my cigarette to show him that tonight I’m a nicotine addict who doesn’t care that it’s minus seventeen or so outside.
I push the heavy grey ‘Emergency’ back door open and then shiver in the chill that greets me, asking myself if leaving the heat and the prospect of a snog with gorgeous Jimmy or John or whoever his name was, who I just left holding a beer for me, is really worth it.
The door slams closed behind me and I realize that I’m locked out but I’m in no mood to panic. Mr Poker Player will hopefully come to my rescue if I bang loud enough once I’m done.
I can still hear the music from inside, I’m more than a little bit tipsy and I’ve decided that this Christmas is going to be the best one ever, so I keep dancing like there’s no one watching. And there is no one watching.
It’s almost midnight in a little yard out the back of Pip’s where no one my age ever goes unless they’ve no choice, which is the case for us tonight. I search my pockets for a lighter.
‘Ah man, now you’ve just locked us both out! Do you know how long I’ve been waiting out here for someone to open that damn door?’
‘Sweet Jesus, you scared me!’ I gasp in reply to my companion who I now realize is sitting in the shadows.
‘Sorry, but we’re going to have to wait now until the next smoker comes out if we want to go inside.’
I get my breath back and turn towards the husky American accent that comes from my right. My unlit cigarette waves around and points to the heavens, my feet are still dancing a little bit too ambitiously.
I’m in slippery electric blue cowboy boots, which I now know are certainly not the best footwear when there’s snow on the ground, but I should be more concerned that I’m stuck in a back yard with a stranger who seems more than a little pissed off at me right now.
‘You really shouldn’t jump out on people like that!’ I reply, straining to get a better look at him, and trying to match his tetchy mood. ‘I could have fallen over and broken my ankle and that would not have been—’
‘Charlie?’
My heart stops. He just called me Charlie. No one ever calls me Charlie except my brother when he’s showing off or . . .
‘Tom? Tom Farley?’
I must be imagining things. This cannot be real. I take a step back and put my hand to my chest, saying a prayer that this isn’t some prank or messed-up dream like so many I’d had down the years since I last heard his voice.
I walk closer, towards the silhouette, and I lose my breath when I see his face.
That voice – how could I not have recognized it after playing it over in my mind for so long? Those eyes that I’ve imagined staring back at me just once more, those lips, that hair, those arms I’d longed to hold me.
It is him. It can’t be. I don’t understand.
‘Tom Farley?’ I say again.
He nods. ‘How the hell did this happen?’ he asks me, just as flabbergasted as I am.
I can’t believe this is happening. I can’t be that drunk, can I?
I’m locked out of a bar in the back end of nowhere, on a freezing cold night in December, and the one person I find in the same position is the one person I’ve been basing my whole imaginary future for five whole years upon, even though deep down I thought I’d never see him again.
Rewrite the Stars is available in Irish bookstores now.
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