Sunshine and suspicions

The feeling had begun to dawn on her; they saw each other often enough, and it was getting to the point where it was no longer all her doing but mostly his suggestion. But she'd grown up so much the past year that she pushed all wonderment away resolutely. After all, this was him.

She never saw a reason to decline hanging out, as he was good company, but there was always that little risk that things could suddenly get awkward. Like when the sun gets behind a cloud for a spell. Granted, most of the time she imagined that he was a relaxed as she was, but every now and then she would fall silent while he rambled on about something. She wasn't zoning out, but the fact that he was the 'quasi-ex' dictated that she couldn't be too nice. But she had gotten the feeling that he wasn't being nasty back at her as often as she was initiating it.

This particular sunny afternoon the brown eyes stayed obstinately behind orange-metallic sunglasses, a cheap knock-off model (that she loved) with mirror glass so you couldn't see past your own reflection, but still catch that there were eyelashes somewhere behind there. He'd forgotten his shades. So they walked down one sunny cobblestone street with him squinting or looking sideways, and her staring more or less directly at the sun, because she could. But being outdoors the whole time was his idea (which she saw no reason to decline - after all, all swedes worship the sun). And ice-cream is always a good idea. But she caught herself thinking that maybe it was rude to hide one's eyes like that when the other couldn't...
Stop. The dictate was that she couldn't be too nice.

For the time she'd gotten to know him after their short-lived fling, he'd invariably fallen silent whenever he got annoyed and then excused himself early (usually quoting sincere tiredness as an excuse to go home). What was happening more often now was that she was the one falling silent (not out of annoyance) but he was still the one getting tired. This was unfortunate.
She couldn't think of anyone - no, in fact, she knew absolutely NO one who got so easily tired, so early. It didn't rhyme with his relatively busy social life or his penchant for working out.
Being his polar opposite - a late-nighter with excessive energy - she knew that they were an unfortunate match as far as friends go. But she was also increasingly certain that the social laws generally weed out what isn't meant to be - if one person out of two genuinely doesn't like the other, that usually stops them from hanging out at least once a week. Also, there was hard proof that they'd influenced each other's taste in music, food and entertainment - and she credited him for finally getting her to wear a helmet.

He'd thrown her off a bit this afternoon by picking up the tab for both when they bought food - that was way out of character. But then, he owed her money for a theatre ticket, and was still short. And even if she hated nagging people about sloppy IOU's, she took his joke a tiny bit seriously when he said "Now we're even" with a mischievous grin. There was one familiar pattern though: he complained (conversationally), and she didn't. They were like that, respectively.

So as she tramped homeward on her bike in the still radiant sunshine (he got tired...) she couldn't help but feel that things felt convenient - they liked each other. Fair enough.
Maybe the problem was that he didn't like people.