Entangled: part ii
#Rom-Fi #Valentinesday #Series
Part ii of my Valentine’s mini-series - Part i can be found here.
Previously…After discovering Sam has a brain tumour, Sam and her partner volunteer to undergo the controversial and dangerous Entangled process. Although extremely painful, they survive and awake together and finally understand what it means to be entangled.
They won’t let you leave straight away. We needed to learn how to live inside each other. When you sign up for this, you can’t comprehend the totality of the experience, the completeness of becoming Entangled.
Our subconscious had three states: me, you, and us. The hardest part of the training was learning how to separate the states. It seemed strange to compartmentalise ourselves again after committing all of ourselves to the process, but the “Doors,” as they called them, were the only tool we had to protect ourselves.
Sometimes, you want to do your own thing. Without being crude, it’s vital for a healthy relationship to have some mystery; we both agreed on that. We learnt to construct doors that allowed limited privacy. It’s impossible to hide thoughts, but you can limit exposure to physical sensations and sensory inputs. I didn’t need to experience Sam going to the loo, for example, unless she chose to leave a door ajar as a joke… which never ceased to be funny to her.
“Shit just got real”, should be Entangled PLC’s slogan—her words.
It’s weird, the things I miss most about us.
We accepted our lives would be very different after the procedure, and we made plans, doing everything we had been told to do in the so-called evaluation process beforehand. We quit our jobs. Seems drastic, but it’s very hard to work in a focused, concentrated way apart from each other. Companies had sprung up for entangled couples - they wanted the unique perspective of two minds working as one. Agencies, entertainment companies, and talent managers came courting our signature. We had everything they wanted: young, attractive, fit. Exchange your privacy for money and reduce your life to an infomercial for freaks. But we didn’t want to be anyone’s bearded lady, and I refused to waste a minute of the time we had left together. We had the perfect plan for us, we thought it at the same time.
The lack of family made leaving easier, and our small gang of close friends tried hard to understand. Some overdid it, some drifted away, but most lied with dignity. My friends blamed Sam. Sam’s friends blamed me, and we let them. Everyone found it hard. They all wanted a piece of Sam before she died; I got that. But that Sam gave her entire self to me instead of them, they chose not to get at all.
We had a dinner party a few days after we got home to share the news of our imminent departure. Those who came took it well. They understood.
All except Teri.
Sam’s ex had always been polite but cold towards me. They struggled with Sam’s rejection but were so desperate to appear “Cool” with it. Teri said as much, many times. They pushed to stay friends when letting go would have been easier for everyone. I respected them for that; after all, they had been together for a couple of years, and Teri loved her, but now, I know Sam never loved them back. She struggled with that lie, and being unable to hide that from me didn’t make it easier to live with. Sam had always claimed she had no time for religion, but her buried catholic school girl guilt ensured she did her best to leave no sin unresolved. So I supported her in inviting Teri, even though she knew I thought it was a terrible idea. “I guess I won’t have to feel guilty about that for long”, she joked silently as we chopped vegetables together.
Gallows humour is funnier out loud, trust me.
I never understood why you have dessert at dinner parties if nobody lets themselves eat it. The way people refuse, like it’s a badge of honour, is just weird. I took great pleasure in tucking into a second helping of a gooey gateau, watched by the assembly of envious twinks and gym bunnies when it happened.
It started small. I noticed the change in Sam as I talked to Chloe about hotels in Thailand through a mouthful of sponge. I sensed a heat rising in her. Tiny chemical changes occurred as her body prepared to fight. Sam wasn’t the flight type, but in our three years together, I had seen her angry just a handful of times. I didn’t realise how well she hid it, something she’d learned as a child to protect herself from slap-happy nuns. I liked to rage and roar; it helped me offload. Sam would go quiet and sad. I would go for a run; Sam would drown her anger in a hot bath. Now, our entangled emotions were impossible to hide from each other. Especially the negative ones. They run free like wild animals, crashing through your safe place.
As Sam became angrier, I tuned Chloe out. I could hear Teri explaining what they meant by “a passing phase” and “…thought you’d come back”. Sam was rummaging through her arsenal of inflammatory responses and getting ready to fire. I didn’t want tonight to end in tears, mine, hers or Teri’s, so I dived in front of the bullets, so to speak. It should have been as simple as tapping someone on the shoulder, but now her shoulder is a neural pathway, and the tap a quantum stimulation of her synapsis, which should have created a gentle tingling sensation. Unfortunately, I went in too hard. Sam grabbed her head in pain. She snapped around as if I had punched her.
“Get out!” Her words as loud in my head as they were in the room.
“Sorry, I was just checking in…”
“Get out!”
She tried to shut the door, but I was too far in. She slammed my head into imagined oak over and over. The doors may not be real, but the pain certainly is.
“Fuck Off!” The words had left my lips before I realised. Our brains struggled to control inside and outside voices; a torrent of abuse, both said and thought, flowed between us. We didn’t notice our guests leave. Our first entangled fight. The first time we had hurt each other. Nobody explained the pain we could inflict with our thoughts.
When you write it down, it seems obvious.
We said nothing but shared everything. I lived her anger and sadness, and she resisted my fear and protection. We tried to stand our ground, as we had always done. But as quickly as the storm began, it faded away. Anger and fear are born when trust splits like an atom, blasting reason and love aside. But you can’t split trust when it surrounds and envelopes everything between you.
We could see past the exterior and understand the truth of “I didn’t mean to do that” in the technicolour of our minds. No matter how much you trust someone, there are parts you will never see; trust is belief and faith. Entanglement is the power to look a god in the eye and know truth. My apology lifted her, and they danced together.
We reached for each other.
As I pulled Sam’s T-shirt over her head and flicked her bra open with one hand, I thought about how much Teri would have understood her better if they were entangled. Sam laughed so hard she micro-vomited on me. Screaming with mock outrage, I scooped her up and ran to the shower. Our clothes fell away as our minds opened to each other. The hot water became a conduit, flowing over and between our bodies; touch became thought became rapture. Enveloping us as we disappeared from the world and made love under the gaze of our universe.
The next day, we left.
We saved up some money, sold the house and the car, gave the cat to my mother, and reduced our lives to two rucksacks and a joint account. Our stripped back lives made space for our entangled existence.
As we prepared for our trip, we sensed the tension, stress, and worries in each other and worked together to ease them. I worried about money, and Sam worried about organisation and schedules. I got excited about the not knowing. Sam, by anticipating what she knew. Our differences became understanding became a shared reality.
We jumped on a train and found ourselves in Paris in the spring. Sam had been to Paris before, but this was my first time. Everything we saw, we saw with fresh eyes. Blue skies, flowers, heels and hats. Her excitement, drawn from memories, added colour and depth to my experience. For her, my childish wonder conjured new delights from old places. But neither of us was prepared for the joy of bread.
On our second day, I roused us before dawn. Sam was begrudgingly becoming a morning person as our sleep habits converged, but I still had to entice her with the promise of sunrise and breakfast to get her dressed.
At a tiny corner patisserie, I bought a warm baguette and two lattes, and we sat on the steps of Sacre Coeur to watch the sunrise over Paris. But neither of us saw it rise that day. The world slowed as I ripped off the first chunk of warm bread, dropping the white flour flesh onto my tongue. Sam was gluten-free and hadn’t eaten proper bread for years. As the taste flooded my mouth, her eyes widened, and she groaned, gripping my arm. I stopped chewing, afraid that I had somehow hurt her again, but I sensed no pain. She took the bread from me, tearing a piece off, her hand trembling as she laid it on my tongue, whispering, “Chew!”
We shared the sacrament of love on the Cathedral steps.
The world opened up for us; all foods were literally on the table. We spent the next three days eating and drinking, tasting new, old, and forbidden things. I’d never tried cashews or peanuts; I’m allergic. I’m still not sure what the fuss is about, but it was liberating to try. Our senses stretched and flexed. Every day, we found new ways to explore the world and each other.
I noticed the synesthesia first, our senses melding and merging, stimulating and enhancing one another. I would eat, and she would smell. Sam would hear, I would taste, and we would see everything together. Love came in many colours. Blue for nature, brown and green for food, pinks and violets for the sun, and teal for the rain. A rainbow spectrum of love that flows out, combines, then splits, reforms, strong and constant. Our entangled state became an amplification of experience, emotions, touch, sight, and sound.
Oh, the sounds!
End of Chapter 2
Entangled: part iii
This is the final instalment of my three-part Valentine's Special mini-series. If you are just catching up… Part I is here…. and Part II is here.
Chapter 2
Simply beautiful, as I knew it would be, from reading part one. And yet something is lurking… it’s so well-paced.
Finally got a chance to dig into this full story. This is an exquisite fusion of science fiction and raw emotional depth—entanglement as both a quantum phenomenon and a profound metaphor for love, loss, and the self’s dissolution into another. The writing is immersive, lyrical, and devastatingly intimate. A beautifully executed meditation on connection, grief, and the permanence of love.