May Exclusive - "Hum" - Part 3

Forty minutes later, Charlie steers Bella back into their hotel room. He marches her over to the bed and sits her down.

“That’s enough.”

Bella hitches and gulps. Her wet hair is plastered to her head. “I was just puh-puh-playin’!”

“Playing like a little kid,” corrects Charlie. “Misbehaving like one.” He sighs, sits down beside her. “I should’ve known. You weren’t ready for it.”

Bella sniffles. “Just wanted to play,” she whispers.

Charlie groans. “But you’re big, remember? You’re a grown-up.” He waves a hand. “You can’t be acting like a four-year-old in a hotel pool.”

“I’m not four,” Bella argues. But really, how old does she think she is?

Five? Six?

It’s not her fault. Charlie understands that. It’s the creep that did this. The maniac who saw a woman and decided to twist her mind, to squeeze out the maturity and leave her a distracted, immature mess.

He takes Bella’s hand, still wet and wrinkled from the pool. He uncurls her fingers to find stolen gold.

“Bella,” he says. “Come on.”

His girlfriend twists her lips. “I won it. I’m allowed.”

“It was just a game,” says Charlie. “You don’t get to keep someone else’s toys.” But he doesn’t take the plastic coins, because really, it’s the last of their problems.

“You need your music,” he says, picking up the earbuds and his phone.

“Don’t like it,” Bella replies, squirming away. “Too loud.”

Charlie looks her in the eye. “We can turn down the volume, but you still need to listen.”

“Come on,” he says, holding out the buds. “You’ll feel better.”

Bella covers her ears with her palms. She shakes her head vigorously.

Charlie sighs. It had all started so well, down at the pool. Before Bella had lost her mind. Before Charlie had lost his temper.

* * *

They had it to themselves, slipping into the warm, clear water. They swam to the deep (well, deep-ish) end and held each other. They kissed, and Charlie felt a stiffening between his legs and Bella’s tongue in his mouth.

“Really missed you,” whispers Charlie. There was nothing childish in Bella’s expression or her touch.

And then the woman and her two kids showed up. Bella broke away from Charlie, breast-stroked her way to the other end of the pool, and then looked back at him, grinning.

Charlie watched as the mother got her toddler and little girl into the pool, both kids wearing long-sleeve sunsuits.

Charlie understood that this was just an interruption. That he had his girl back.

So, why was he so royally pissed?

His erection wasn’t quitting, and he stayed in the deep, lurking in the depths like a sea monster. And he found himself annoyed at Bella. For being taken in the first place (if that’s what really happened). For being so easily fixed with a couple of alt metal songs (if that’s really how it works).

He watched Bella make small talk with the mother:

“I know! We’re in the valley, for sure.”

He watched Bella coo at the baby.

“Look at you, you got starfish on your floaties! You’re so cute!”

Bella earned smiles and giggles, and she fluttered a wave at Charlie. Come over here, come join the fun.

But Charlie stayed exactly where he is.

It was if the last few weeks had never happened. It was Charlie who had been worried sick, Charlie who resorted to the expense and stress of a private detective to track Bella down. And then when Charlie had arrived at one of the potential locations, there was Bella, seemingly right as rain, or at least cheerful, playing in the yard without a care in the world.

Thanks to ‘Daddy’.

What really happened at that house? It’s not as though Bella was physically hurt, there isn’t a scratch on her. So how on earth did she let that creep turn her head like that?

He watched as the older daughter climbed out of the pool and ran to their towels, returning with a plastic box.

“Aha,” said the mother grandly. “Treasure!”

“You do it,” the little girl ordered, and she looked with anticipation as the mother opened the box and took out a series of small objects. It was only when she threw them across the pool that Charlie understood; plastic coins and jewels. It was like a treasure chest.

“Watch, Mommy!” the girl said, and then she began swimming with a graceful urgency towards the first piece of treasure.

“I’m counting,” the mother announces, holding the baby and beaming at Bella. “She’s so good in the water.”

Charlie watches as Bella shouted encouragement at the daughter. And that was all this is – Bella was the woman without kids, helping the other woman. A splash of fun on a hot day. And when the little girl got short of breath, called on her mother to help, what is Charlie’s girlfriend but a helpful grown-up.

Bella paddled towards him, and then she flipped and dove into the deep end, and Charlie watched as she scrambled on the pool floor, scooping treasure into her hands.

And even before she said anything, Charlie saw Bella’s face when she emerged from the water. In her smile she was triumphant. In her eyes, she was delighted. In her mind, she was little again.

“I diddit!” she yelled, making the mother laugh good-naturedly, and the daughter stare at Bella. What kind of grown-up was this? And was this good news or something else?

Bella swam back to the family, but her form was off, and she splashed and kicked, choking on water.

“I got a red one,” she announced importantly, showing the jewels in her hands. “And a green one, and a coin.” She thrust them towards the woman as the daughter looked on, folding her arms across her chest.

“Good job,” says the mother, but there was something in her eyes.

The mother puts the toys back in the plastic chest.

“Are we done?” asked the daughter, sounding as though she was quite okay with the news.

“Play again later,” the mother replied brightly. “Want to practice your laps?”

The girl nodded, and she’s off, smoothly kicking her way into the front crawl. A good girl. A real girl.

It’s Bella who had the problem.

“Again,” she barked bluntly, pointing at the treasure chest.

Uncertainly flashes across the mother’s face. Is this a joke? Is it something worse? Something that told Charlie that she understood there had been a change in dynamics. Drugs, or mental illness. “Uh…maybe later,” she says, meaning, How about never? How about back off?

Bella had always been to read other people. Always know when to push, when to pull back. But it seemed that she hadn’t been born with the skill.

“Again,” she said, whining this time.

Charlie moved towards them, watching the color rise in Bella’s cheeks. She didn’t need the blazing sun to warm the blood rushing in her ears. She had the body language of a small child about to melt down.

Bella opened her mouth – to say the juvenile or adult version of outrage, they would never know – and Charlie clamped her hand in his own. “Too hot,” he said firmly. “Let’s go back inside.”

Bella turned her anger on him. “Don’t wanna,” she replied, sticking out her bottom lip and trying to pull away.

A perfect chance for Charlie to use his firm tone from before in the hotel room. But Charlie wondered why this was his job? Would it be like this forever? Had the creep done something permanently to Bella’s mind, so there would be childish moods lurking around every corner?

“Now,” he said, with the firmness he’d used earlier when they’d first arrived at the hotel.

This time, it didn’t work.

Charlie watched as Bella’s jaw hardened. She fixed him with a defiant stare. “You can’t tell me what to do,” she said, her tone ice-cold. “You’re not my daddy.”

Charlie spared a thought for the mother who must be hearing every word and surely wishes she wasn’t. And then he turned his attention back to Bella. The adult-sized, problem child.

“That’s right,” he hissed, pulling on her arm, yanking her through the water. “Thank God, I’m not, you ungrateful, spoiled little shit.”

Forget ‘firm’. He would be fierce. Not firm but fierce. Hell, he would scare her if he had too. Because he wasn’t interested in being her father. He barely wanted to be her girlfriend in this sun-dazzled, roasting moment.

Bella looked at him, wide-eyed, and then burst into tears. Which is how they made their trip back to the hotel room; Charlie yanking Bella like a ball on a chain, and Bella wailing and weeping.

* * *

In the room, with Bella’s hands over her ears to avoid the dreaded earbuds, Charlie is calmer. Perhaps it was just the sun that made him so mean-spirited and callous. Perhaps it was the relentless Mesa heat that made Bella lapse into her altered mental state.

They would feel better now. If anything, the hotel room air made him want to shiver.

“Come on,” he says gently, “Nap time.” He closes the curtains, and the room is mercifully dark. He lifts up the comforter and shepherds Bella underneath it. He climbs in beside her and kisses her cheek. “You just got over-tired, that’s all. And all that sunshine! You’ll feel better after you get some rest.”

“Not sleepy,” says Bella, yawning.

“Then just close your eyes,” Charlie says. He scrolls through the playlist. Tracks from Fireflight, Three Days Grace, Creed. Seems that it’s more genre than band that helps clear Bella’s thinking, but Charlie settles on more Evanescence anyway. Just in case.

You don't remember me, but I remember you
I lie awake and try so hard not to think of you

“Want Banks,” Bella whispers. She puts the buds in her ears with a martyred expression, as if he were making her swallow some terrible medicine.

Charlie laughs softly. No chance. “You’ll have to cuddle me instead.”

She will turn her back on him. She will sulk her way into sleep. But instead, she wraps her arms around his neck, and they mangle their pool-damp bodies.

I believe in you
I'll give up everything just to find you

Charlie sighs. Christ, it was hot at that pool. Maybe Bella really did just have heatstroke. Maybe Charlie did too. They’ll both feel better after a nap.

He pulls off his swim trunks, but doesn’t bother Bella who is already snoring lightly, her mouth open and head tilted back. Over-tired.

Charlie won’t sleep, but he does.

To be concluded...