Chapter 2

"Is Kenny in today, Cartman?" I asked after punching in for work.

The fat man scoffed and dumped a shit load of cheese on a pizza before passing it off to Clyde, who scowled and tried to fix his mess. "Check it yourself, Craig, Christ, can't you see I'm busy?"

I just chuckled and walked away.

"God, I swear, these fucking delivery boys, am I right?" Cartman shouted so I could hear.

"Shut up, fatass," Clyde retorted for me – and for the sake of all listening.

I checked the schedule, but it was all for naught, because at that moment, Kenny walked in the front door, answering my question. "Hey," he said. I just nodded back, trying not to think about what we did the last time I'd seen him.

But the place was dead, so I was stuck talking to Kenny for a good half hour before I got a delivery. God, that guy was a weirdo; he talked for thirty minutes about different kinds of salamanders as if I gave a shit. But I guessed that being weird was his schtick, whether he was conscious of it or not. There were times when his weirdness was oddly attractive, but I was starting to believe more and more that that was actually his other personality.

I mean, objectively, yeah, Kenny's a pretty good-looking guy, in that he kind of looks like Tweek. But he wasn't really my type... Did I even have a type? I shook it off. I would never cheat anyway, I'm just not that kind of person.

I drove for a few moments with my thoughts silenced. Then, a voice in the back of my head said, "What kind of person are you?"

The question surprised me so much I almost went straight through a red light. As I slammed on the brakes, I wondered, what kind of person was I?

God, questions like those get into your bones, seep into your veins and your skin until it's what you're made of head to toe. They eat you alive. And so did those six words for the entirety of my shift ruin my night. Even Kenny's not-so-subtle, not-so-normal flirting couldn't distract me from the question. Was I really the kind of person not to cheat? What did that mean I was? What ruined my night twice as much was the realization at 2am in my shitty car after my night of shitty work, I had no idea who I was at all. I was an empty shell.

In the door by 2:15, I wasted no time pounding back a few shots of vodka. I almost never drank vodka, but beer takes too long to drink, and I needed to be drunk immediately. I sat at the dining room table with the vodka and my thoughts and revealed the only thing I knew about myself: I was a borderline alcoholic. It wasn't the first time I'd started drinking alone at 2am after waiting to hear Tweek click off his writing lamp and pass out down the hall.

I slipped into bed at 3:30, glad to find my boyfriend fast asleep; for once, his twitchy face was still. There was something surreal about him being asleep – some part of experiencing Tweek involved the shaking and the twitching and without it, it almost looked like he was dead.

I thought about what he'd written about giving up being folly, and I hoped he believed it, I hoped he could stay sober for a long time if not forever. It had been three days and he seemed content enough. He had some new meds to back him up this time around – that's what most of his "time away" had really been for. But I still worried, because last time, last time was exactly the same. It had started out great.

The next morning, Tweek beat me, waking up at six to write down a dream and staying up. I enjoyed having the bed to myself (in only the most literal sense) for a few hours and woke up at eleven when Tweek placed a cup of coffee next to me with a post-it note on it. Aw, I thought to myself, sitting straight up and taking a sip before reading the note.

"My parents are here to check for drugs."

Oh, well, not quite as romantic as I'd been expecting. Even a drawing of a dick would've been better than this news. I heard Tweek's mother's voice in the next room and quickly hid the bong and weed I almost never used in the closet. I checked Tweek's dresser drawer, but it was thankfully clean. I got dressed and went into the living room.

"Hey, Mr. and Mrs. Tweak, good to see you." I said, but they ignored me like they always fucking ignored me and went right past me, into our bedroom. I rolled my eyes and drank my coffee. They emerged a few minutes later looking reluctantly apologetic.

They talked to Tweek a few more minutes and left, and Tweek had a few moments of heavy breathing into my chest before he was okay and decided to make grilled cheese. Well, I didn't see that coming, but, hey, grilled cheese. Plus it would probably cheer him up too I guess.

"At least you didn't have any drugs for them to find," I offered weakly as he fried grilled cheeses.

He gave me a look. "Of course I don't, Craig." I held my hands up defensively. "Christ, I hate them." I assumed he meant his parents. "They weren't there for me when I decided to apply to grad school, they weren't there when I went to rehab the first time, they won't help me put a dent in the ninety grand I owe in student loans and hospital bills... Oh my god, my credit card bill is due today! I'm fucked!" he started panicking.

I grabbed him by the hands and told him it would all be okay.

"How? I haven't worked a shift at Harbucks in two weeks, I have no money!" He squeezed my hands tightly.

I gave him a kiss. "Relax, okay? I got it. You just focus on graduating."

Tweek s queezed his eyes shut. "God, I need... I can't do it without – "

"Yes, you can. You've got me," I said, surprising myself. I was suddenly taking on the White Knight role when what I really was was a Court Jester. I had no plans and no answers and no ideas, and here I was, trying to be the rock to this crashing wave.

Tweek finally calmed down and had a cigarette. I didn't work and Tweek didn't have class till six at night, so we had a few beers. Drinking for the second time within twelve hours. I should be writing all this down so my future therapist will have a quick reference guide.

After a few drinks, we fooled around a bit, but Tweek insisted he would fall asleep and sleep right through class if we were to have sex in the middle of the day. I told him he was crazy, but he reminded me that he'd been up since six and went to make himself another coffee.

Tweek went to class a few hours later, and I tried getting my numerous friends to get off their lazy asses and get together. But no one was having it today, except of course, Kenny. I was reluctant to hang out with him alone, but Marjorine was working; she was a waitress at the Irish pub next to the pizza place. Weirdly enough, no one seemed to know if either the pub or the pizza place had a name. They had been a part of Denver since before signs, it seemed.

But I invited Kenny over to watch baseball, one of our few common interests. Well, we weren't really into baseball as much as we were into making fun of baseball. In the most American, patriotic way possible, I swear.

"Look at that guy! Nice moustache, Julio. YOUR NAME IS JUST SPANISH FOR JULY!" He cried at the TV.

We laughed and moved onto the next victim of our Shakespeareanly well-crafted disses. "OOH, look who's out of face surgery for the game," I remarked, pointing to a player with an oddly-shaped nose and eyes way too far apart. "Don't forget to take your Botox injections after every inning!"

After three innings, neither of us could stand to watch baseball for another second. We flipped around the TV, but nothing was on, so Kenny took out his laptop and showed me some clips from one of his next films.

"See, I'm trying to tell the story of a poor man, right?" he said, pointing at the screen, where Kenny was a beggar in the street. I tried not to laugh. "But he's secretly a government spy!" And Kenny showed me that clip, where Kenny rips off his bum clothes and – tada! – he's got a suit now!

I checked out of the rest of his film-major nonsense but pretended to listen. I'd gotten good at that ever since Kenny had gotten into surrealist filmmaking.

"What do you think of that, Craig?"

Shit, a question. I rolled the dice instead of asking for repetition. "Yeah, sure thing."

He lit up. Awesome, score one for Craig. "Really? I didn't expect you to agree," he said. He closed his laptop and took out a video camera from his backpack. "Alright, let's get this show on the road!"

"Wait, what? What did I agree to?"

He pushed his glasses up his nose and looked at me like I was a moron. "I said, 'I was thinking the next scene should be you and I making out' and you said, 'Yeah, sure thing.'"

I closed my eyes and said, "Fuck, Kenny, you are so weird! We're not making out and putting it your stupid movie."

Kenny scoffed. "Yeah, I'm weird. Okay," he said sarcastically. "C'mon, Craig, relax, it's just for the movie. The film needs you!"

Well, that was true at least. Well, it needed a little less Kenny and a little more sanity and coherence.

He started to set up the camera on the coffee table. "Okay, no, Kenny," I said. He ignored me and finished the set-up.

"Alright! Here we go!" he said in his loud, "director" voice. He used it to control groups sometimes, but most of the time he just used it to get everyone to take two steps to the left and one step back for the perfect shot. "Okay, don't move, you're perfect right there."

"Kenny – "

He sat down next to me, and Kenny was gone, replaced with some unknown, nameless actor. "You know she means nothing, baby!" he said passionately, smoothly taking off his glasses, flinging them across the room and leaning into me. Since I definitely wasn't talking to Kenny McKormick anymore, I decided not to ruin the shot.

We kissed for a second before I couldn't stand it. I pushed him away, but Kenny seemed to think I was acting. "C'mon, babe, lighten up! I know we come from separate worlds, but that doesn't mean we can't be together!"

I almost cringed at the dialogue. I just relaxed and tried to convince myself I wasn't doing anything more than helping a friend in need. Great need, given what his film looked like so far. I initiated another kiss, but Kenny quickly took control. At first, I was all too aware that I was kissing the wrong person. But as each second passed, the next one seemed to come faster and faster before we were spinning through time, forgetting the camera, forgetting we weren't supposed to be doing this.

We had still been sitting side-by-side until Kenny brought a hand up to my neck and motioned for me to lay down on the couch. His mouth was immovable from mine, his tongue bypassing my protective barrier of teeth to get to mine. My arms found Kenny's hips, his hands found my chest. And then, out of nowhere –

"Cut!" I stared at him as he seemed to hit an off-switch and turn back into Kenny the hipster film nerd, no longer Mr. Nameless, suave actor and kisser extraordinaire. And then I felt awful. But it was just for the film, right?

"So, I don't know if I'm going to be able to use this scene in my film," Kenny remarked, watching it back on the camera.

"What? Why not?"

He pointed to my hat. "Your character isn't supposed to wear hats."

I rolled my eyes and grabbed the camera. "You're insane. I didn't just do that for nothing, you'll use it and you'll like it."

The blonde snickered. "Don't worry, it wasn't for nothing," he said with a wink. I frowned. "Fine, fine, maybe I can photoshop the hat out of the scene..."

I wanted to yell at him to get the fuck out of here, but at that moment, Tweek walked in the door. I checked the time – almost eight-thirty already!

"Hey Kenny, what are you doing here?" Tweek said, taking off his shoes and joining us on the couch. I turned off the camera and chucked it in Kenny's bag before Tweek could ask about it. Kenny filled the silence by ranting about his film, managing to be smart enough not to mention the part we had just worked on.

You know that feeling of deep regret you get when you've done something bad, but you know there's no going back? It was the same feeling I'd gotten when I was getting my first tattoo done by Stan in Token's treehouse when we were twelve. The feeling I called, "I've made a huge, unfixable error in judgement." And just like that tattoo of a crooked, poorly-drawn arrow on my ass will live forever, so will the poor choices I made today.

But I stuck it out for the five minutes it took Kenny to leave, and then I tried to forget all about it. But I didn't, and instead I spent the whole night justifying my actions to myself. "I was thinking of Tweek the whole time!" and "It was just acting!" played on repeat in my head for hours.

While I ate ice cream and watched reruns of Friends, Tweek went to write for a while, emerging every so often for coffee or for a break. He would lay with his head in my lap and ask me for each character's life story every few seconds, but I'd seen "The One Where Joey Moves Out" more times than I'd heard Tweek's adorably stupid questions, so I didn't mind.

"How was class, by the way?" I asked at the commercials, muting the TV.

He shrugged. "It was okay. It seems like everyone knows I was in rehab, though. They all stared at me and whispered about me!" I wrapped an arm around his shoulders. "Don't worry about them, just worry about you."

"And you."

"No, no, don't worry about me," I insisted more out of guilt than concern. "Just Tweek."

He rolled his eyes and got up to go back to his desk in the next room. "As if I could only worry about me." He kissed me on the forehead and said that he had to get back to his term paper.

I replied, "How can you have a term paper already? Class just started!"

Tweek called back from the next room, "Class never ended!"

Typical Tweek, leaving me with some wannabe-enigmatic statement I'm sure left his mouth with an intellectual smirk.

I watched Friends with the mute on so I could hear the scratching of Tweek's pen, thoughts furiously leaking out if it in ink form, transforming his blank slate into lines, lines into words and words into his amazing ideas. After a while, I started thinking about how much of an ass I was for doing what I did to him, and before long it overwhelmed my senses and I took the mute off, just to replace my own inner voice with Monica's and Rachel's voices.

We went to bed early, Tweek citing exhaustion and writer's block for the reasons. We kissed goodnight, and because I didn't think I could handle any kind of intimacy, I rolled over and pretended to be out like a light. When I eventually rolled back over, Tweek was asleep.

I lied awake for an hour, thinking things over. Was I really not the kind of person to cheat? I thought it was pretty obvious that I actually was. God, what had I been thinking? And the worst part was that I couldn't stop relishing in the feeling of Kenny's body against me. It wasn't because I had feelings for him, though, right? If anything, it was simply the rush of knowing I was being bad.

Well, what's done was done. I got up for a while, just paced around the kitchen and sipped a beer. I was even emptier than last night, because at least last night I thought I knew I wasn't a cheater, and now I didn't even know that.

I returned to bed at two in the morning after three drinks, and it was just enough to lull me into a thoughtless, emotionless unconsciousness.