every time he called me Charlie now. At home and to everyone I knew, I was Charlotte Jane Taylor, named after the Brontë sister of the same name and as a nod to my mother’s favourite novel of all time, Jane Eyre. My older sister was Emily Maria and Matthew James, the first born, often joked that he just about escaped being named Heathcliff as my dad got to choose his name.
‘I mean, why are you even busting your ass with university?’ Tom asked me. ‘You’re gifted, girl. You don’t need a degree! Your qualifications are all in there already.’
He pointed at his temple to emphasize how I already had all the accolades I needed in my creative brain.
‘But I’m going to be a teacher,’ I told him. ‘So, as much as I love what you’re saying, in the real world I kind of need a degree.’
Tom hunkered down in front of me and looked me right in the eye. His hands were on either side of me, on the arms of the chair. I could feel his breath on my skin. I could smell his woody, aromatic cologne. I thought I might explode.
‘No, no, no!’ he said, looking up at me. ‘You, Charlie Taylor, aren’t going to be a teacher. You are going to be a huge star.’
My heart rose into my mouth. He had a presence, a charm, and the electricity between us was filling me up and making me feel weak at the same time. He was so close to me now his arms were almost touching my legs.
And you’re going to be my muse, I wanted to say in return, wishing he would just stay there right in front of me forever.
He stood up, pushed his hair from his face and, when he sat down again on the couch, I silently thanked my brother for bringing Tom Farley into my life. He was everything. The way he looked at me and the way he just made me feel was nothing like I’ve ever felt before. I was dizzy with lust and sheer admiration. I was brimming with confidence, more than I’d ever been in my whole twenty-two years on this planet.
‘Go on, give us one more,’ said Tom, resting back on the sofa now. He put one leg across the other to show he was in no hurry whatsoever.
Matthew was almost green with envy.
‘It’s almost three thirty, Tom,’ he said, really peeved now. ‘We could make a start before the others arrive? I really want to go over some poster ideas for our new dates and we’ve a press pack to pull together.’
Matthew looked at his watch, but Tom was still looking at me.
‘I think we should wait on the others instead of having to repeat yourself, Matt,’ he said, grinning my way. ‘Plus, I want to see if Charlie is a one-hit wonder, or if there’s more to come from such a genius mind. Go on, give us one more song, Charlie.’
And so, I sang another one, and then another, neither of us noticing that Matthew had by now left the room, leaving us to it as we got lost in the music. I was singing for him. I was actually singing my very own songs for this beautiful stranger who was making me feel like I was the most important person in his world right now.
‘Hang on,’ Tom said while I was just about to finish a chorus. ‘Gimme that again.’
He grabbed my brother’s guitar from the corner of the room and strummed along with me, then harmonized when he caught on to the chorus. All the time when we sang together, our eyes were locked and I felt like my heart might burst.
‘Keep singing that part,’ he said to me at one point. ‘I wanna try something here.’
And so I did what he said and it made perfect sense. We were making music together. It was the most thrilling rush ever and this was shaping up to be the best day of my life.
‘You’ve blown my mind, Charlie,’ Tom said to me after the third song. He sat the guitar to the side and shook his head. ‘I could seriously listen to you, and look at you, all day. You’ve got it, Charlie. You’ve just got it!’
He was in genuine disbelief. I tried to absorb all this unexpected praise from him.
‘And you know what? The most beautiful thing is you have no freakin’ idea just how good you are!’
I tried to catch my breath in the intensity of it all as we stood there in the middle of this tiny, smelly, hormone-filled student sitting room, our breath patterns moving to the same rhythm. As Monday to Friday university accommodation to my brother, me and our friend Kirsty, the room had hosted many booze-filled parties and late nights over the past four years, but never had I experienced electricity in the air as I did right then with him.
‘You can sing too and play guitar as well as drums,’ I managed to stutter. ‘You’re a mighty fine talent in yourself, so I can’t take all the credit for what just happened.’
I tried to divert the compliment back to him, but he wasn’t having it.
‘No, no, Charlie Taylor. I can play, yes, but you have star quality. You’re on a totally different level and I don’t say that lightly. You’re amazing.’
My bottom lip quivered, and I pushed my hair behind my ears.
‘You really think so?’
‘I really know so,’ he said, holding my gaze. I didn’t know whether to laugh or cry at all this attention from someone so gorgeous and talented who seemed to be so much in awe of me.
Matthew had always been known as the creative one in our family. He was the colourful one who wanted to sing in a band as well as study to be an architect, so he was the one we all looked up to, cheering him on along the way. I was going to be a teacher and any musical notions I had were brushed under the carpet when we were growing up. It just wasn’t how my family saw me. Matthew was the cool, talented one, Emily was the middle child, the quiet, sensible one who obeyed all the rules, and I was the quirky, hippy dippy baby, the rebellious clever kid, and the one with brains to burn whose way with words would be best suited to a classroom where others would benefit from my wisdom. I just dressed a little funny and sometimes found myself in hot water, but that could all be fixed. Or so my parents hoped.
‘I’ve never properly sung these songs for anyone before,’ I confessed to Tom. It was dropping dark now outside, so I walked past him and pulled the curtains closed.
He gently took my hand on the way back.
‘You have magic, I mean it,’ he whispered. ‘Please believe me, Charlie. You can’t ignore what happened just now.’
We stood there, frozen in the moment. I could barely catch my breath.
‘I think I’m going to get you into trouble,’ I told him.
His eyes widened. ‘I think so too,’ he said.
‘With the band, I mean!’ I retorted quickly. ‘I mean, I hope I don’t get you into trouble with the band. Sounds like the others are here now.’
Our hands parted and he rubbed his forehead, which told me he’d been thinking of a totally different kind of trouble.
‘Yeah, yeah, the band. That’s what you meant,’ he said, then looked at the ceiling and blew out a long breath.
That accent of his was a killer and could get me into trouble any day, I thought. I closed my eyes for a second. I wanted him to reach out and touch me again, to tell me that he didn’t care if he got into trouble. He said I had magic. He said I was amazing. He said so many things I’d never been told before and I wanted to pause this moment so that we didn’t have to just leave it at this.
I wanted more of Tom Farley and when I opened my eyes I could see from the pain in his face that he wanted more of me, too.
‘I suppose I should make a move,’ he said, but his eyes told me he didn’t want to go. I didn’t want him to go either.
Now that we’d stopped singing, I could hear the rest of the band members chatting in the kitchen. Matthew was going to kill me. Not only had I taken up so much of Tom’s time and attention, but I’d also taken