You Got Me, I Didn’t See Nothing
The Uber rides became his new accomplice. Each afternoon, he'd would wait until his ol’lady comes in eat, take a bath then she goes to bed from working the graveyard shift. He’ll fail the seven digit to the liquor store and makes his order and has it delivered to his front door all he needs is to do, have his ID ready once the uber driver arrives. His secret tucked away in an innocent-looking brown paper bag.
He got better at his performance – the careful closing of the front door, the Dr. Tichenor mouthwash always in hands reach when ready, the casual conversation over dinner that revealed nothing of his afternoon detours.
She noticed the Uber charges with his quick but explanations about only having the one car and he needed some personal items from the store. The lies flowed as smoothly as the water shed poured in his vodka bottle to get his attention. You know it’s getting bad when you start believing your own lies.
But I guess he didn’t know the old saying “whatever you do in dark will always come to light” and secrets have a way of creating their own paths, pulling relationships into dangerous territories. The more skilled he became at hiding, the wider the distance grew between them. Their conversations, once flowing freely, became carefully choreographed around the truth. She stopped pouring water in his liquor bottles, stopped checking his breath, stopped checking his stash spots, stopped asking where he'd been – but her eyes carried the weight.
At night, lying beside her, he'd stare at the ceiling and wonder if he was doing the right thing. The drinking hadn't stopped; it was getting worse, and some days he would emerge as someone else, and somewhat darker. He was proud of his schemes, with the system he had built to maintain his habit while keeping the peace. But in those quiet moments, with her breathing softly beside him, the pride tasted as bitter as the last drops in his hidden bottles.
She knew, of course. Not the specifics – not about the Uber rides or the cabinet or the carefully timed it’s arrives and the time to disposal of evidence – but she knew in the way that someone who has been around the same person for years knows when something is wrong. She recognized the subtle shifts in his personality as evening approached, the slightly glassy look that sometimes crossed his eyes during their late-night TV shows, the growing collection of mysteries in their shared life.
But she was just tired of being the detective, the enforcer, the warden, the one who had to carry the weight of their problems. So she chose silence – but a silence that felt like a question mark, waiting for you to come clean.
And so they continued their charades, each day taking them further each other. He mastered the art of hiding, and she mastered the art of seeing without acknowledging. But Their love remained.
Some evenings, when the hidden vodka flowed through his veins and her silence filled the room, he would catch a glimpse of their reflection in the darkened window – two people sharing a space but living in different realities. In those moments, he would almost come out with the truth, almost letting the carefully constructed scheme out. But then the he would say something crazy to stir he mind away from what he was about to say just to make time go, and at that certain time he would reach for his phone to schedule today and tomorrow's Uber ride, continuing the routine that was simultaneously saving and drowning them both.
They were still writing their story together, but now it was in invisible ink, in the spaces between words, in things one of them chose not to say. And somewhere beneath it all, the truth continued to flow, waiting for the moment when one or both of them would be ready to look face to face once again.