Short Story: 'Love in Mind'

"Can I get your opinion on this dress that I am looking at?" Willow thought

"Willow, I thought we agreed we would not use telepathy for mundane things? We need to maintain some boundaries." Donnie thought in reply.

"I know, I'm sorry. But seriously though, I really need your opinion. What do you think?" Willow shot back.

"Willow, just because we can transmit our thoughts into each other's minds does not mean that I can see what you are looking at" Said Donnie.

"I know, I just sent you a text." Willow replied.

You probably have a few questions about this interaction, if you're not from around here. My name is Donnie Wilks and, in my universe, when two people fall in love, they gain telepathic abilities. They can literally read the mind of the one they love. They can also mentally project their thoughts into each other's minds at great distances. No one knows how this happened or how it works. It's just always been this way. There are some caveats. Love can't go just one way. If you both aren't in love, you can't read each other.

More heartbreakingly, there is a chance that you can find out you've lost the one you love simply because you can no longer hear their thoughts. Imagine that? One day, you're listening to each other's thoughts, the next day you can't hear them anymore and you both know exactly what that means. Can you fall back in love? Regain your telepathic link? No one knows. There have been no documented cases of people regaining their link.

I've seen couples stay together after losing their link but, perhaps I'm just cynical, it's pretty clear one or both of them is no longer in the relationship. I'm a bit of an expert in this, I run a dating service. My job involves connecting people and helping them foster their telepathic connection. I've watched telepathic connections come to life for years, but I've never seen it come back between two people who have lost it. That's why I tell all of my clients to take great care of this gift. A relationship takes work, even one where each partners thoughts are always up front and on display.

I met my wife Willow at a grocery store. We were both reaching for crème of onion soup. Our hands touched and our eyes met and we giggled awkwardly. I wasted little time in asking her out. Again, I am a bit of an expert in this field. Attraction and love have a particular science to them and I happen to understand the science better than most. We first read each other's minds when we were driving to a friend's wedding. We were listening to the radio and cracking each other up with memories of childhood and the embarrassing music we loved.

I heard her working up the courage to tell me how she had her first kiss to Bed of Roses by Bon Jovi and, not knowing that I had only heard her thoughts, I blurted out that I also loved Bon Jovi as a kid. She looked at me shocked and her eyes welled up. "You can hear me" she thought. And it hit me like a Mack truck. We were in love, we linked, we could now hear each other's thoughts. The mix of emotions in this moment is almost indescribable. Fear, excitement, joy, and terror. Anxiety is a common reaction as you try to reign in your thoughts so as not to lose your connection or frighten this person you love.

Thankfully, the connection is rarely a brief one. To love someone is to be vulnerable, to trust them implicitly, even with the weirdest, darkest, and strangest corners of your mind. That is to say, it's unlikely that any of your darkest, weirdest thoughts are going to scare off someone who truly loves you. That's not to say it can't happen quickly. I've seen relationships between telepathically connected people end in mere months. But I've never seen it last less than 5 or 6 months. I've had people tell me there were in love for only a week, but I don't buy it. Telepathy is not fostered via lust.

Sadly, death is the end here as it is anywhere else. As much as it would be wonderful for the the soul or the mind to continue on after death, we have no evidence of that. Our heartbreaks, in that way, are just like yours. Perhaps even more heartbreaking if you can imagine losing someone who has quite literally lived in your mind. Losing someone who knows everything about you is like losing a large portion of yourself. I try not to think about it, it upsets Willow when I do, and I never want to that.

So, I imagine you have other questions? What about parental love or the love of a sibling? Does this create a telepathic link? No, again, no one knows why this is, but the link only happens to people who mutually fall into romantic partnership. Your kids, your parents, your brother or sister, your closest friends, cannot hear your thoughts. Our scientists are trying to come up with theories, but our theologians and religious leaders have posited a sort of intelligent design. You can either believe that God created us with this gift, and it is up to us to foster and create the link. Or you can believe that everything has been pre-destined, God chose to connect you to this person specifically with a plan in place.

I like the idea that romantic telepathy is a gift. I don't believe that God intended for Willow and I to fall in love. I believe we met at the right time and that together, through building trust, being open and vulnerable, and having similar interests, we fostered our romantic connection organically and it happened because we wanted it to. It keeps going because we work at it, we nurture our bond and we never abuse it. One of the mistakes that many couples make is reading all thoughts, all the time. Willow and I made rules, rules she often ignores, but rules, nevertheless.

For Willow, our telepathic connection is far less of a fascination. For her, telepathy is just life. It's just something she always expected would happen. She grew up with telepathically connected parents, she had strong role models for how to be in a telepathically connected relationship. And, secretly, in places only I know about, Willow believes that God has pre-ordained us to be together. She tries to be coy, but that's hard when someone can read your mind, but, she likes to pretend to be a skeptic when in reality, she believes God decided who our partners were going to be. Though she is shy about sharing it with others, Willow believes that we've been psychically connected all our lives and it activated when we met, even if we didn't realize it until later.

I love that about her.