Finding Our Way Through the Dishonesty

I wonder if he guesses that because of my own experience with drinking I can add and subtract the number of beer cans in a case, the fridge, the trunk of the car, the bottom of the garbage can faster than anyone I know. I can estimate the ounces of whiskey or gin left in a bottle at a glance with the accuracy of a chemist. Based on the way he hedges my questions he has not yet realized this. I wonder how long it will take before he gives up the secrecy, figures out how futile it is to fudge the numbers and turn away from my kisses-- I can smell the sweet fog of alcohol from just one beer long before my lips ever meet his, and the avoidance simply breaks my heart. I know all of the excuses by heart and when he utters them my heart fills like it will split into a million pieces. It's not even the words I listen for to give me answers, really, it's that slight thickening of his voice, the too careful way he structures his sentences, trying not to let me see, that always gives it away. It might be different if I knew him less well, if I hadn't spent so much time trying to memorize all of the things that I love so much about him, different though, is not always better. It isn't the return to drinking that upsets me so much. It is easy way the lies and evasion roll off of his tongue, although I guess on some level I realize that at its very root, alcoholism is really just a fundamental problem with honesty. I somehow think that if we could just get past that-- to the point where he can open the beer and drink it in front of me as easily as he does the second I walk out the door, then we will have made progress, at least in our relationship, if not in resolving the problem all together. Perhaps then we might actually be able to live with it without it destroying us. I suppose only time will tell.