Oppositional Behavior

Jeff swiped a hand across his forehead, a coating of sweat flicking off his hands as he shook them off. "What a great idea!" he said to the ground. "We really needed this!"
Sue turned and glanced at him, her eyes sharp and slightly fearful. She turned back and looked forward, at the path that led up ahead of them into the more sheltering woods. "Do you want to turn back?"
Jeff looked up to where the path led and plastered a smile across his lips. "No! And miss all this?" His arms flung out in a gesture that encompassed the wooded hills, the sharp high peeked cliffs and the churning waters below.
Sue looked around, listening to the water crashing and the sporadic call of birds. The leaves on the trees were fiery red, blazing yellow and pale green sprung to full color by the strangely relentless sun. Five hours ago when she had suggested to Jeff that they go for a hike the air had been crisp with fall coolness and slightly overcast. Now with the sun suspended at highest noon above them and an Indian Summer casting a heat wave at them, they were overdressed for the almost eighty seven degree weather.
"I can carry your jacket for you," she offered, her hand out to him.
Jeff shook his head while staring at her hand. "No, of course not! I can carry yours for you if you want."
Sue dropped her hand and turned away from him. She refused to pay attention to him when he was like this. When and if she ever brought this moment up to him, he would deny his sarcasm and opposition, by telling her how much he had loved that walk and everything they had seen. Her anger built towards him as she turned the corner ahead of them, entering the woods that was a mere five degrees cooler. She glanced back at his struggling form, watched him as he grabbed branches to hike himself up the incline and up to her.
He almost knocked into her, and when he did he glanced up, his eyes hooded by his eyelids. "What's wrong? Do you need a break?"
"No. Do you?" Sue looked at him with her anger plain on her face.
"What, me?" He shrugged and laughed. "Of course not! Come on!" His voice drifted back to her in phony levels of harmony.
Sue shook her head and gazed up at the trees, watching the sun play through the branches and dance down on her. A bit of peace filled her and she began to feel her temper begin to fade.
They walked in silence for awhile, Jeff often galloping a few steps to stay in front of her and she began to play with him, letting him get the better of her for awhile before suddenly walking directly behind him.
"Your so fast! Do you want to lead?" He said at one point, turning and glaring at her, his face bright red and his teeth bared.
Taken aback, she fell back a few steps and decided to leave him alone, letting him shuffling himself into his own frenzy. She remembered when they had first met and how she had been so confused by this oppositional behavior, how she had struggled with him and with herself. She had never been right when he became like this, although every word that he said was in praise of her and anything she might do. She wondered how much longer she could put up with this. So many of his friends had turned away from him because of it, leaving only a few patient stragglers to deal with his tantrums. Over the years she had learned to ignore it and often, as now, to play with him, but his anger was so quick and flaring that she began to fear him, rather then like him.
"Where are you?" She heard him shouting through the trees. "Come up here! Its so lovely! Is this what we climbed so high to see?"
She sped up over the last circle of trees and looked out on a neighborhood in the process of being built. There was nothing beautiful about it. Everything was grey in color, from the outline of cement basements, to the skeletal structures of houses in the process of being built. The forest floor that had once lain there and stretched out for miles all around was completely gone. Last year, when she had come here with her mom and sister, they had looked down on miles of fall colors swaying in the breeze, interrupted by the tall evergreens that grew between them.
"Its gone!" she whispered, her voice low and husky.
Jeff turned to her with a surprised expression. "What's gone! Its still here! Look! Were you interested in buying one of these houses?"
Sue turned her defeated eyes from the constructed graveyard and up at Jeff's smug face and for a moment imagined pushing him off the edge of the hill, watching him fall, rolling and screaming down the long slant. She smiled despite herself at that image and his smile lessened slightly.
Sue smiled bigger and felt a weight fall off her shoulders as she shrugged and turned back into the woods, away from Jeff.