The Rebel and His Bride by Bonnie Pega

her a cold can of soda and they’d sit on the church porch for a few minutes and chat. Annabelle was careful to stick to talking about the kids and the play.
    He seemed friendly and comfortable. Almost. There were still odd moments when she found him watching her with that expression in his eyes that drove her crazy. She sensed that he wanted something from her, but couldn’t figure out what it was. Her physical awareness of him was still there, too, but she tried to ignore it. Unfortunately, she wasn’t very successful.
    After the next-to-the-last rehearsal, Gregory showed up, as usual, right at nine o’clock. He was wearing jeans and an old college sweatshirt withthe sleeves cut off. She stared at the sweatshirt, her stomach tight. God, she remembered that shirt. She’d given it to him at Christmas. Their first and only Christmas together.
    As soon as the last child had left, she turned to Gregory and said, “You kept it.”
    He glanced down at the sweatshirt. “You had one like it. Marty accused us of trying to look like the Bobbsey twins when we showed up for the frat’s Christmas party both wearing identical sweatshirts and blue jeans.”
    “And even the same color tennis shoes.”
    “Yeah. I’d forgotten that.”
    “I’m just surprised you still have it after all this time.”
    “I kept everything you ever gave me.”
    Annabelle fell silent. It was gone, she thought. That comfortable feeling. Chased away with that one sentence and a nine-year-old sweatshirt. The itchy feeling beneath her skin was back, along with the questions in Gregory’s eyes. Or maybe the questions had never really gone away and she had been fooling herself into thinking they had.
    Time to go home. “I, uh, can’t stay to chat tonight. I have things to do.”
    He nodded and handed her the soda he’d brought. “You may as well take this with you. I have to tinker with that air conditioner again, anyway.”
    Gregory stood in the doorway and watched Annabelle as she got into her car and drove away.Sighing heavily, he went back inside the church, hoping to coax a few more gasps of cold air from the cranky air conditioner.
    After a few minutes he sank down on the nearest pew and leaned his forehead on his hands. Over the past couple of weeks he had begun to think he might get through Annabelle’s prickly exterior. Tonight, though, the prickles seemed to be back. In full force.
    Not that it mattered. She was under his skin, as thoroughly as if they’d never been apart. He wished he could say he was happy about it, but the truth was he wasn’t sure how he felt. All he knew was that his life had been great until Annabelle came back. Well, okay, maybe not great, he admitted, but certainly fulfilling. And if he hadn’t been exactly happy, then at least he’d been satisfied. Until now.
    Now she made him realize that no matter how much he loved being a minister and loved the honest, earthy people of White Creek, that didn’t make up for the lack in his own life. It didn’t make up for the empty house that greeted him at the end of each long day.
    When he sat in his cozy little den working on his sermon, it was to the echoes of emptiness all around him. There was no sweet female voice humming in the background—not that Annabelle’s voice had ever been sweet, it was too full of sparkle and sass—no high-pitched giggles of children in the distance. There wasn’t even the snuffle andsigh of a dog sleeping in the middle of the floor, just the occasional scratchings of Sebastian and Danni’s strange cat when he came to visit.
    When he pitched for the church baseball team, lots of people cheered him on, but no one special, never anyone special. When he lost a member of his flock, the death always cut him like a knife. He spoke words of comfort to everyone else, but there was no one to comfort him. And when he went to bed and tossed and turned half the night, he could only think it was because he was sleeping alone in a bed meant for