Someone Else

“Can you keep a secret?” 

Eliot had been outside, smoking a cigarette by the light post for a moment of quiet, but now he turned and looked at the person beside him, who was very obviously under the influence of...something.  

Eliot tried to frequent this bar as often as he could, he liked it, and it wasn’t exactly hard to convince himself to go after work. He didn’t know what he loved about it in particular, maybe it was the way the neon lights around the bar tended to hide everyone’s features, or maybe it was the weekly pub quizzes that they did, which always got everyone riled up. There were a number of other things. Maybe he liked it because it was so easy to be someone who was happier, more carefree there. Eliot was thinking that that was probably the reason that the man beside him liked it too. 

“I’d like to consider myself a pretty good secret keeper, yeah.” Eliot finally answered, a small smile turning up his lips, after thinking about the man’s inquiry for a moment. 

“Good,” The man sighed out, his lips turning up too, so they were wearing matching half-smiles. 

Eliot waited for the man to continue, contemplatively watching the smoke the trailed up and off from his cigarette. He’d heard a lot of secrets before. Well, maybe less of secrets and more of confessions. It was his profession, after all, as a detective for the local police department. But that was a technicality, or whatever. If you asked him, he definitely thought confessions were secrets. They were almost synonymous. 

“I think...” The man gulped for a moment then gasped out a small laugh. “I say I think, but I know. I’m dead certain, really. Ha! Dead certain, that’s a bit of a joke, innit? Especially since the punch line is that I killed someone.”  

Eliot felt his breath stop in his chest for a moment, and he started coughing on the inhale of his cigarette.  

“Oh, geez, sorry. I dunno, I guess that probably shocked you, huh?” The guy swiveled his head to the side to look at Eliot, smiling still, but there was something wrong with the expression. “He was my friend, yeah? Maybe even more than that if I’m honest. Fuck, no, he was definitely more than that. But I killed him, goddammit. And I feel so fucking terrible all the time.” He closed his eyes, and his mouth dropped open, taking a short breath. “I feel terrible, all the time now,” 

Eliot paused, looking at the ground, toeing the cracks in the pavement that had been there forever. Terrible. That word stuck with him. Not guilty, just terrible. He didn’t know why, but he kind of wanted to cry. He looked at the cigarette in his hand, making a split-second decision. 

“What happened?” He asked, softly, still looking at the cigarette, which was now heating his fingertips with how short it was. He threw it on the ground. 

“Good question. Sometimes I don’t even know. It plays over and over in my head, and it still feels like a mystery. I had-I, I wanted to invite him out for something. I don’t know, I was lonely, and I hadn’t talked to him in a while and I was feeling nostalgic. Ha! If that’s what you want to call it. But I invited him out to the bridge that looks over the strait, you know? We were watching the lights of the boats in the distance, and just drinking the stupid champagne that he brought, and I swear to God, it felt like we were on top of the world for a little. I looked over, and it was so dark, but the small lights were reflecting on his face just right, and it looked like he belonged with the stars. I wanted to reach over, and just dare to touch him so badly. So. Badly. So I did, I tried to brush his cheek, but maybe I startled him, or he wasn’t expecting it? I don’t know, okay? I don’t know! Because suddenly, he flinched or I scared him and-and, he slipped over to the right, and we were sitting with our legs over the edge- and, he just fell. Just like that. I don’t even think he screamed. He just fell into the water, and you know how that goddamned strait is. Nobody can survive that fall, and even if they did, I’m pretty sure the current would get them.”  

He took a giant breath in, his chest hitching on the inhale. Eliot was pretty sure if he looked close enough, he could see tears on his face. But, if anyone asked, Eliot would tell them he didn’t look close enough. 

In fact, if anyone asked about this story at all, Eliot was pretty sure he would say he didn’t know what they were talking about. 

The guy was still standing next to him, hadn’t taken the chance to run off yet. He was just playing with the cuff of his sleeve, pulling at a loose thread. Then, he started to speak again, his voice softer this time. 

“Truth be told, I don’t know why I didn’t tell anybody or ask for help. I brought him out there, I was the one that made him fall, that’s blatantly obvious. And I should want to do right by him, really, I should. But somehow, I just can’t make myself confess to everybody that I was the person who ruined his life. Literally, eh? And nobody’s...said anything about him missing, so.”  

“It’s a pretty intense secret,” Eliot spoke finally, his tone matching the other man’s. He stood there for a minute, his head feeling like it was stuffed full of cotton. He had already decided that really, he hadn’t heard any of this. Officially. He didn’t know why. He was a detective; it was his job to take confessions like this and arrest people. The circumstances surrounding it didn’t even give the impression of a true homicide, it was probably more like manslaughter. God, he wondered as his eyes looked skyward, what was wrong with him? Wondering about the technicalities of his death.  

And yet... 

Eliot sighed, picking another cigarette out of the carton, and lighting it. 

“It is, isn’t it?” The man spoke in response to his statement from before, not saying anything else, except for sighing once more. 

They both stood there for quite a while outside of this bar with the neon lighting hitting their faces just right, hiding their features and both of their silences simultaneously saying a lot, and not saying much at all.