Most of All You: A Love Story

by Mia Sheridan

He’d given me so much, made sacrifices to care for me, and I’d provided nothing in return. So I’d given him my name. It was the only thing in the world I had left to offer.

Our hands linked together in a way that made me feel we’d been created together, that every part of his body might contain a place just for me, a place I’d fit like no other. As if we’d been sculpted with the other in mind.

I inclined my head, trying to catch her eye, to make her smile. “I don’t mind chasing you, Ellie. Just let me catch you once in a while.”

I let out a soft breath as my own lips formed a smile. I knew what he meant. He wanted to give me the peace of this moment, the…poetry of this place, the romance, the scents and the sounds and the serene beauty all around us. He wanted to give me love. And, God, I wanted to take it, I was just so scared to reach out and grab it.

She knew what I knew—that he had survived six years of hell by surrounding himself with love. With hope. How strong did your mind have to be—how beautiful your heart—to hold on in such a way? To choose love over fear again and again?

And I finally knew what it was like to love a woman: body, heart, and soul.

“What if she doesn’t come back, George?” George’s eyes were filled with a pained sympathy. He paused for so long, I wasn’t sure if he would answer my question. But finally he said, “Then I guess you have to find meaning in the ones who stayed.”

She was my one and only. Together we would carve our future. And for the first time in so very long, I was truly home.