Michael 2.0

Part 11

After a wonderful afternoon in the Sand Cove Beach, Charlie was exhausted, but she knew she hadn’t been that happy for a long time.

The beautiful place near the Garden Highway was a peaceful, friendly environment. Michael was delighted by the river, watching as children played on its margins. He was given new clothes for the day, and he looked quite handsome in his red shirt and sunglasses, though the accessory was useless since he was not sensitive to the sunlight. At one point, he could not resist and joined the small children in a fun ball game. Charlie knew his blatant innocence was genuine, though the parents of the children saw it as a charming way to make them laugh.

“You are very lucky, your boyfriend is very good with children,” one of the mothers commented.

Charlie smiled, unable to correct her. Everything was too perfect. Carefully, she had placed a recording camera on her purse, making sure it would not miss a movement of Michael.

At around 3PM, it seemed it would start to rain. Charlie was mainly worried about Michael; he could not be near water.

“We must go, Michael,” she said, urgently. “It’s raining?”

“So?” he asked, still laughing with the ball.

“You cannot stay on the rain, Michael. We must go.”

“Oh, alright,” he sighed, giving the ball back to the children and saying goodbye with a funny salute.

They ran back to Charlie’s car right in time; Charlie sighed, relieved.

“Will you take me back now?” Michael asked, a bit disappointed. “I wish the day had been longer. I had so much fun.”

“Oh, we don’t have to go back now, we still have time,” she replied.

“Ah, good! Then, can I ask you something?”

“Yes, anything.”

“I have seen this image in one of the books,” he took a scrapped piece of paper out of his pocket. “I did not understand it very well. All the images were similar, but they showed what I thought to be princesses and princes. But this one is not like that.”

Charlie unfolded the paper and examined the image; clearly, it had been taken from a children’s book, and she could imagine what the other images were. Michael had taken the picture of the Disney movie “Tarzan”. How to explain to him?

“Do you remember the videos we watched that day?” she asked.

“Yes, I do.”

“This image is taken from a video like that, but it is a long video, a movie. It’s called ‘Tarzan’, and it tells the story of a boy who was raised by gorillas in the jungle, and one day meets humans for the first time. This girl in the image is the human girl he met, Jane.”

“Raised by gorillas? How is it possible? It isn’t possible, is it?”

“It is a really old movie, a cartoon, made for children. Not everything in the movies is possible, or real. But sometimes we need to believe it is.”

“Why?”

“Because,” she looked at him “then we will be ready for real life. If we know that impossible things can be done, life will not be so hard.”

He nodded, though Charlie didn’t think he had fully understood.

“What is a cartoon like?”

“Do you want to watch one?” Charlie asked without thinking.

Michael looked at her, delighted. “Yes! Yes, please!”

“Alright. I have the cartoon in my house. Is it alright if we go there?”

“Are you inviting me to your house?” He asked, confused.

“I mean… It’s aright if you don’t want to go, then we can go back. I thought, as it is your day off, that you would, you know…” Charlie regretted having that idea right away; maybe Michael would have understood it differently. Besides, there was the risk of Caroline getting home at any minute. What was she thinking?

But Michael did not seem to be upset or suspicious; he smiled at Charlie, such a perfect, sincere smile of joy, that all her worried momentarily faded away and she held her breath.

“I would love to, Charlotte! You are the best friend anyone can have. Can you show it to me? And I would love to meet your home. Do you live with your lover? You told me you have a lover…”

“No,” she rushed to say. “I… I don’t have a lover anymore. Turns out my lover did not love me, so we are separated.”

Michael frowned. “What? How so?”

She sighed, embarrassed; it was not like her to talk about feelings, but Michael seemed so inviting to her, that it was almost natural. “Do you remember, Michael, when I told you that there can only be one lover for one person?”

“Yes.”

“If someone has two lovers, they will get hurt. The feeling is too special to be shared like this. And my lover decided to share his.”

“Oh, Charlotte,” he exclaimed. “He had another lover?”

“Yes. That is why we are not lovers anymore.”

Michael nodded, but this time, she knew he had understood it.

“I am sorry,” he said at least. “It is a horrible pain that we have to learn to hide inside us, is it not? You don’t deserve this pain.”

Charlie was speechless. “How do you know how it feels?”

“Because I feel it too,” he replied, simply.

There was an awkward silence; Michael looked down, and Charlie could not decipher what he was thinking or feeling. But she knew, at that moment, that they understood each other in a way no one could explain.

“Shall we go?” she finally broke the silence. “Do you still want to watch the movie with me?”

He looked up again, meeting her light eyes. “Yes, I would like that very much.”