Chapter 4

I must've fallen asleep without realizing it sometime in the early morning, because sometime slightly later in the early morning – 7:30, unfortunately for me – I woke up. The door clicked shut and the shower started and I knew Tweek was feeling ashamed of his relapse already – that's what the shower was for.

I could've fallen back asleep, but I knew he had class and I didn't want to leave this unaddressed until later that night. I got up, stripped off my underwear and joined him in the bathroom.

"Tweek?" I said as I opened the door, so as not to scare him.

"Craig?" he poked his wet, blonde head out of the shower. He blushed when he saw I was naked, but giggled and invited me in.

The shower was small, but so was Tweek, so it did fit us both. "Look, Tweek," I said as I stepped in, "About last night – I..." he froze. "I know you were high."

He laughed. Oh, good, I thought, it's all a misunderstanding. "No," he said, "I had a couple vodka and Redbulls at the bar on campus to calm me down, but then I was too drunk to get home, so I drank a bunch of coffees, and then when I got home, I was really high on caffeine, but then I crashed right before you got home." I stared at his wet face, oddly steady and convincing. His story had contained a lot of details, he could be lying... No, I had to trust him. I did trust him.

"Oh, well, okay then, I'm sorry." He just nodded and proceeded to shampoo his hair. Once we were both clean, Tweek roped me into a quickie before he would have to leave for the day and leave me all alone with nothing to do. You can see how he roped me in.

He boldly pushed me against the glass shower door, making it obvious how horny he was. His tongue met mine and his hands set to work.

The entire time we made love there in the shower, I couldn't help wonder if Tweek had suddenly become a great liar, or if I really was just drunk and paranoid last night. I wanted to believe him, but I knew what I'd seen.

By the time we finished "showering," Tweek was five minutes late for class, so he left in a rush. Once he was out the door, I decided to prove myself wrong, searching the apartment high and low for drugs. The entire time, my mind wandered to questions of what it all meant. Was I really this mistrusting of him? I guessed I was.

I started by looking through his old hiding spots, though he rarely recycled spots once I'd discovered them. Not under the bed, in the medicine cabinet, hidden in pill bottles or lazily left in the open. Nothing in the kitchen or living room. Not in the closet, in his drawers or anywhere in the bathroom. I even checked in Stripe's cage.

I took a break to get a coffee and several aspirin – I was a bit more hungover than I wanted to admit. Sitting at the kitchen table above my mug, head in my hands, I debated whether to quit while I was behind or redouble my efforts of paranoia.

But then I thought of somewhere I hadn't looked. I went over to Tweek's desk in the alcove between the living room and the bedroom. His laptop usually sat in the middle of the white wooden desk, but he'd taken it to school. Paper, some blank, some covered in philosophy notes littered every square inch of its surface. Most importantly, it was Tweek's most sacred space, and here I was, about to dig through its drawers because I was convinced I was being lied to.

I jerked open the ornate, wooden drawer on the front. My heart sank when I saw a ball of tin foil and a lighter. It hadn't been paranoia after all.

I sat down. After a second of gathering myself, I looked further back into the desk drawer, where, sure enough, his pipe could be seen. The green one, the one he'd said he'd thrown in the river a month ago.

For some reason, the person I texted first wasn't Tweek or even Stan, but Kenny. I told him exactly what happened and waited, staring at the contents of my boyfriend's drawer. Kenny replied: "I'll come over." I should've told him no, but I didn't.

I was numb and dead the entire ten minutes I waited there. What should I do? What would Craig do in this situation? I felt myself trying to transcend my existence, trying to think about it from a point of view completely detached from myself. I wanted to know the objective, right thing to do, though I knew there likely wasn't one.

And I wanted detachment from fault, too. For some reason, my jumbled mind had me convinced that this was my fault. That, somehow, if I had believed what he told me in the shower and not gone looking to prove him a liar, that he wouldn't be one. I wondered if, in some alternate universe where Craig didn't go looking for Tweek's speed, it wouldn't have been there to find in the first place.

The buzzer buzzed and I had to get up. I went to the door and hit the button to let Kenny in. Two minutes later, he was standing in front of me looking forlorn but comforting. Wordlessly, I lead him to the desk and showed him.

"Man, he'd been doing so well," Kenny said, rubbing the back of his neck. "What are you going to do?"

I felt a chill run down my spine and I finally spoke: "I don't know."

Thankfully, he didn't push me. He seemed to sense that I was disturbed and led me into the living room to sit down.

After a few silent moments, he said, "Call him."

"Call him?"

Kenny nodded, but he didn't look sure of himself. "It's the best thing to do."

I wondered if the best thing wasn't to forget this had ever happened and try to go back to normal, but I found my fingers on the buttons of my cell phone, unconsciously punching in his number. I put it on speakerphone.

It rang and rang and rang and it was all I could do to not hang up.

But it went to voicemail and Kenny quickly ended the call before I started speaking. "Never voicemail, man." So we went back to sitting silently.

"Okay," he said after a few minutes of thinking, "he'll be back from school soon, right? We just have to have an intervention when he comes back – "

"No," I said, "that would only freak him out." I held my head in my hands and stared at our feet, mine bare and his in his signature suede hipster shoes, skinny grey jeans tucked into them. Finally, it hit me and I said, "He can't go back to rehab. He won't." I didn't know it until I'd said it, but Kenny's face told me I was 100% correct.

He had a semester left, I told myself, I couldn't do this to him. I couldn't make him go back, not now. But I also couldn't let him smoke the semester away.

Kenny put a hand on my back and said something about it all being okay, but I was tuned out.

I hadn't realized how long I'd been absorbed in my own pity until the front door cracked and Tweek came in. "Oh, hi Kenny," he said in surprise. He took off his shoes and came into the living room. "What's up?"

I stammered, "Not much, how was class?" Tweek told me a story about something that had happened in metaphysics, but I was too busy staring at the hard look on Kenny's face telling me to do it, to get it over with.

When he concluded his story, I did. "Tweek," I said, my voice nearly cracking. "I found a rock in your desk drawer. You were high."

He stopped short on his way to the bedroom to get changed. He turned around and his eyes went straight to Kenny. His face was beet red and he wouldn't look at me. "Y-yeah," he finally said, finally admitting it, "yeah, I was. But it was just once, I swear," he said pleadingly, "I was just so stressed out yesterday, I... I had to."

I didn't know what to say. I knew he was embarrassed that I'd outted him in front of Kenny, but he seemed to be trying to use Kenny to keep himself out of rehab: "Please, don't make me go back," he said, and we all knew where he meant. His eyes, large and scared, darted from me to Kenny. "I – I only have one semester left, I can't – don't – "

When we was almost in tears, Kenny said, "Tweek, it's okay. We'll think of something, okay? We don't want you to go back either."

We shared the tense air for a moment, all of us thinking, until I said, "Here. You agree, you promise not to smoke up again, and I'll..." it was out of my mouth before I knew what I was promising: "And I'll quit drinking until you graduate. In solidarity."

This seemed to calm my boyfriend down immediately. He looked into my eyes intensely. "Seriously?"

I had half-expected him to realize what it would mean for me to quit drinking and refuse, but his slightly lit-up, optimistic face told me I had to follow through. "Of course," I said, more to myself than to him, "I love you. I'd do anything for you."

He came over and hugged me, and I wondered if I could stay sober a week let alone four months.

I could do it. It was a test of love, right? To prove to myself that I could stay with him through the hard times. I thought back to what Stan said the night Tweek came back from rehab for the second time. "I couldn't do it, man. Be with someone so unstable." This was my chance to show myself that I could.

Tweek quickly admitted, once Kenny had left, that he was lying when he said it was only once. "It's been a few times. More than a few."

"You've only been home two weeks," I noted. He only nodded in shame.

We sat apart on the couch for a few moments, equally silent, my silence hard and cold, his anxious and apologetic.

When I finally spoke again, I said, "How have you gotten this good at lying to me?" my eyes bore into his as his face became impossibly more abysmal-looking. He couldn't say anything. I sighed and said, "C'mere, I'm sorry, I know it's been hard," and he reluctantly came toward me, we hugged, he murmured that he was sorry a few more times and then stood up to go get changed.

We performed the ritual of purging Tweek's stash like we'd done only weeks earlier before rehab. Tweek went to bed early and I was left to stare at my computer screen and think of anything besides the several beers in the fridge, the vodka in the cupboard, the Jack Daniels in my nightstand. The alcoholic I'd slowly and unwittingly become since high school.

At midnight, I found myself unable to focus on reading Wikipedia articles about Batman and turned to the TV. But I couldn't process anything I heard. I knew I wouldn't be able to fall asleep until at least two, and I didn't know how I would do it without breaking my vow to Tweek an hour after I'd made it.

But I remembered I had some weed left from the last time my sister had come to visit. I took the bong out on the balcony and got high for the first time in months. It wasn't my favourite vice, but it would get me through tonight.

Or so I thought. By the time I returned to the living room to watch reruns of The Simpsons I was itchy for a beer again. I texted a few people to distract myself, but as my luck would have it, nobody was answering.

So I decided to try to get to sleep early. After all, the only reason I was up so late was usually to get drunk or to work, and I was currently doing neither.

I crawled into bed next to Tweek. I had just put a hand on his hip when my phone buzzed. I groaned, rolled over and saw a text from Kenny. "want to come over?"

I rolled my eyes and typed back quickly, "what's that supposed to mean?"

Fuming while I waited for him to respond, I noticed Tweek had stirred. "Go back to sleep, babe," I whispered. He smiled, still half-asleep, and snuggled against me. A second later, he was out cold, and Kenny had replied.

"whatever you want it to mean"

My heart pounded. I wasn't sure if it the sudden rush of adrenaline was from the weed or something else, but thankfully my brain was still relatively planted in reality.

"after what happened today you want me to cheat on him? and what about marjorine in all this? look, it can't happen again."

I turned my phone off completely, rolled over to face Tweek, and tried to fall asleep. Miraculously enough, I was out within minutes.

I woke up after Tweek had left for class. I would've tried to get him to stay home today if I hadn't slept through his waking up.

Only when I checked my phone did I remember the conversation I'd had with Kenny half-stoned last night. He'd sent three texts after I'd gone to sleep: "marjorine doesn't give a shit, craig, she fucks guys from work all the time." A minute later: "i know it's not fair to tweek but i wouldn't suggest it if i didn't want it so bad, and besides, what he doesn't know can't hurt him." I cringed. This was bad. Ten minutes later: "fine. see you at work tomorrow."

I had the day shift today, so I was nearly done working by the time Kenny showed up at five. But as soon as we were both there, he asked me to come out back to talk. I wasn't up for a delivery for ten minutes, so I reluctantly agreed and followed the blonde out the back of the restaurant to the alley.

"Look," he said, pushing his glasses up his crooked nose. "I shouldn't have done it. I'm sorry. It was just a – an impulse. It was stupid."

He was tripping all over himself, blushing uncharacteristically and not looking at me. The only other time I'd seen him so self-conscious was when Token had "accidentally" called him a faggot over the announcements in tenth grade. I tried to comfort him, putting a hand on his shoulder. "Don't, it's okay." His eyes finally met mine and I realized we were definitely within kissing range. I lingered, thinking, a little too long, and Kenny took advantage of the moment of hesitation. He leaned in to kiss me, and I didn't stop him.

As soon as our lips met, I realized that it was never weed that was going to replace drinking, it would be this. The adrenaline coursing through me, the rawness of the inside of Kenny's mouth when I was used to Tweek's timid softness. I was an addict to the core, and I was addicted to the strange and foreign, which this certainly was. Kenny's muscular torso against mine instead of Tweek's thin frame. I sought the new and unfamiliar, and I found it in his rough aggression in lieu of Tweek's passive submission that I still loved all the same, but which just wasn't new.

And the second we broke apart, I hated myself, as I should've. I'd been sober one day and already I'd cheated on the boyfriend I so desperately wanted to help.

To drown out the guilt, I kissed him again, harder, and let him push me against the brick wall as his tongue and mine danced. Not a single thought of how we should've been working crossed our minds. The sharp bricks dug into my spine, but I didn't care. Kenny slid a hand up my shirt and around my back, pulling me closer. He eventually relocated his hand down my jeans to cup my ass, and I snapped back to reality for a moment. "Shit, stop," I said, gently pushing him away a few inches. He looked almost hurt. "I – I have a delivery soon," I said quickly, heading toward the door back inside.

He grabbed my arm and called my bluff. "Are we really going to just try and be friends? We both want this, and Tweek doesn't need to know right now."

I shook my head, not believing what he was asking me to do. "You think lying to him is going to make it okay?"

"We're all addicts, Craig. If you did tell him, he'd probably understand."

I knew I was biased, just looking for a reason to accept his premise, but I saw the truth in it. Tweek knew that addiction was nearly impossible to shake. He might even forgive me...

Before I knew it, we were kissing again, Kenny inching me back toward his car.

"No," I said, pushing him away again, "N-not right now. I... I have to think."

And with that, I retreated back to the pizzeria, not letting his calls of protest stop me. I had already taken it much too far, it couldn't go any further. I focused only on work for the hours that followed, until I was finally sent home at seven. I didn't say a word to Kenny the rest of the night.

Tweek was back when I got home. I found myself unable to look him in the eye after making out with Kenny just hours earlier. I remembered telling myself that I wasn't the kind of person to cheat and nearly laughed at how wrong I'd been.

"Hey," he said when I came in the door. I said "hi" and all but ran to the bathroom. I washed my face and brushed my teeth, but it didn't help. I still hated myself.

"How was work?" Tweek asked when I emerged, sitting on the couch with his laptop. I noticed several empty packs of cigarettes and cups of coffee littered around the coffee table, and when I finally saw his expression, I knew it had been a hard day for him.

I said that work was fine even though it wasn't and sat down next to him. We talked for a while and I ignored the several texts Kenny sent me throughout the night.

I lied awake until the early hours of the morning and wished I could've drowned out my inner voice with a drink, but I couldn't. If Tweek could put his addiction to bed (and he promised that he was clean, and I believed him) then I could, too. I only hoped I'd be able to do so without resorting to cheating again. I stared at Tweek's small form beside me and told myself that it would be folly to let him go.