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"Mi casa es tu casa, my dude. At least until Saturday morning, I guess." Clyde paused for a moment, contemplating what his last sentence could insinuate. "Not that you aren't always welcome here. You can always stay here if you need to. My casa will always be your casa. What I'm trying to say is that you're my best friend, man, and — "
"Clyde, Clyde, relax! It's okay man, I got it. You're my best friend, too." Craig couldn't help but smile at his hopeless bestie. It was that awkward sincerity that drew him to Clyde in the first place. "That's kinda sorta why you're my Best Man."
Clyde's lips bent into a giddy smile, his cheeks dusted pink with mild embarrassment. "Yeah, that's right! And I'm gonna be the best damn Best Man in the history of best bros and men. Fuck Kenny. He doesn't even know where to begin when it comes to being a Best Man! I bet he didn't even let Tweek stay at his place tonight.”
"That's exactly where Tweek is right now," said Craig.
"What? Oh. Dammit. Maybe Kenny will be a pretty good Best Man, too."
Craig chuckled. "You know it's not a competition, right? I just want to spend the week hanging with you like old times, while also working on making papercraft decorations for the wedding. That's not something I could do with Kenny, and that's why you're the best damn Best Man in my world."
Tears began to pool under Clyde’s eyes. “I love you, bro.”
“I love you, too, man.”
“So anyway,” Clyde continued, sniffling and wiping his eyes with the back of his sleeve, “whose idea was it for you and Tweek to spend the week separated, not seeing or speaking to each other before the wedding?”
“Both of ours, actually,” said Craig.
Clyde responded with a perplexed look before opening the kitchen cabinet, pulling out two granola bars, and tossing one at Craig. Craig caught his bar, smiling when he saw it was his favorite flavor. The sound of crinkling wrappers filled the space left empty by their silence. Once both bars were opened, they tapped them together lightly before taking the first bite.
“Why the fuck would you both wanna do that?” asked Clyde, his mouth still full. “You guys have been practically joined at the hip since you started dating.”
“I dunno, man.” Craig took another bite to give himself time to think. “I guess because it felt like a challenge, but also something to make our wedding day, and night, feel more special?”
“That sounds pretty lame, dude.” Clyde ducked, avoiding being hit by Craig’s crumpled wrapper. “I’m just sayin’, that sort of thing sounds good on paper, I suppose, but I don’t think it ever really works out in reality, you know?”
“Then we’ll be the first couple to make it work. We’ll spend the week working on final prep for the wedding, all while thinking about the other one and how much we love each other, and getting all pent up cause we can’t be with each other, until finally on our wedding night, we fuck like the world is ending.”
Craig tried to subtly lick his lip, his thoughts fixed solely on sexy times with Tweek. Clyde noticed, wrinkling his nose in disgust. It was going to be a long week.
By Friday afternoon, Clyde's living room was buried in turquoise, teal, and copper paper hearts. Both men's fingertips were dry and cracked. They were surprisingly exhausted from the repetitive crafting over the past five days.
Clyde sighed as he leaned back in his chair, rubbing lotion into his aching hands. "How many is that? Are we finally done?"
"Once I'm done with this one here. . . There!" Craig stapled the curved strips of paper at the bottom, creating three hearts in one. He tossed the final decoration into the pile. "Two thousand paper hearts to hang from the ceiling, the walls, and any other place my family can shove these little fuckers."
"I don't know about you, but I never want to see a strip of paper again. Ever," said Clyde. Craig nodded and hummed in agreement. "Or anything teal, turquoise, or copper. Those colors can suck my dick."
Craig laughed. "I hear that. I really don't understand the difference between teal and turquoise in the first place. Like sure, they're supposedly different colors, but just barely. I tried to explain this to Tweek, but he insisted on this color scheme. He said it would be sophisticated and modern. I know we're gay and all, but I'm not the kind of gay person who can catalog every different fucking shade of blue."
"But Tweek is?"
"No! That's what makes it so weird! I think he kinda let this whole wedding planning stuff get to his head. We did a lot of it together, but I also know that he'd been talking to Bebe for a while."
"Say no more," said Clyde. His face reflected his personal knowledge of his ex's penchant for all things fashion and style.
Clyde stood up and stretched. He moved into his kitchen, calling back to Craig. “I need a beer to celebrate not having to cut paper strips ever again. You want one?”
“Yes, please,” replied Craig. “Also you never know, Tweek and I might get a divorce sometime in the future, and I’ll remarry, and we’ll be right back here, cutting strips of paper before bending and stapling them into heart shapes.”
Clyde walked back into the living room and tossed a can at Craig. “Yeah right,” he laughed, cracking open the can with a loud pop and hiss. “You’re out of your mind if you think I’d agree to do this again.” He took a long swig, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand when he was done. “Besides, the concept of you and Tweek getting divorced is laughable at best. Neither of you can function without the other.”
“Hey motherfucker, I’m functioning without him right now, aren’t I? I’ve been functioning quite well this whole week if you recall. I love Tweek with my whole body and soul, but despite what you may think, we are not joined at the hip.”
Clyde shrugged. “Maybe not, but you guys decided to not have bachelor’s parties because you couldn’t conceive of having fun separately from each other. That’s kinda weird and honestly a bit problematic if you ask me, but that’s something to unpack in a different conversation.”
“Look at you, using big words like problematic,” Craig jabbed before finishing off his beer.
“Make fun of me all you want. You know I’m right.”
Clyde finished off his own beer and took Craig’s empty can from his hand. He disappeared back into the kitchen. Craig followed.
“What do you want from me, Clyde?” asked Craig. “Tweek is going to be my husband. I love him, and I want to share every moment of my life with him.”
“What I want is for you to be able to have fun with your friends, with me,” Clyde paused to drop the empty cans in the recycling bin, “without Tweek sometimes. Don’t get me wrong, I fucking love Tweek, too, but sometimes I want a little bro time with my bestest of bros.”
“Aren’t I here with you right now? Without Tweek?” said Craig. “Haven’t we been having a good time together?”
Clyde raised his eyebrows. “Seriously? Please don’t tell me that the past few days are what your definition of a good time is now. Yes, we’ve enjoyed being around each other and chatting about the wedding, but you specifically said ‘I just want to spend the week hanging with you like the old times’, and this is nothing like the old times.”
“Yeah, I know,” said Craig, disappointed.
“If you want to make it up to me, let me give you something resembling a bachelor’s party—just you and me. Let’s hang out like we did back in high school and college. Let’s order some food tonight, get shitfaced, and play some video games. Can you at least grant your Best Man that favor?”
Craig smiled. “Hell yeah, buddy. Although maybe I don’t get quite shitfaced; I don’t want to be hungover at my own wedding.”
Clyde’s bedroom was heavy with the scent of pizza and beer. Various empty cans were strewn across the floor. Several half-filled pizza boxes sat on the bed in front of the two men as they played Call of Duty.
“Oh my god, dude! You totally just shot your load all over me!”
“That’s so fucking gay, Clyde!” Craig laughed, falling back onto the bed. “And I’m sorry I shot you, man. It was just friendly fire.”
“Friendly fire, my asshole! You just said ‘hey Clyde, look at this’ before you shot me!”
Craig laughed, low and mischievous. “Yeah, yeah I did.”
“You’re a bitch. You owe me, now gimme a sip of that over there.” Clyde pointed to the far side of his bed where Craig had been hoarding a large bottle of vodka, then back at his open mouth. “Unload a big one right here.”
Craig snorted loudly, which led him to laugh even harder. “You are so gay, Clyde! Are you one hundred percent certain that you’re straight? Cause you sound like you’re auditioning for a fucking porno right now.”
“Craig...just...okay?” Clyde struggled to find his words. “Gimme yummy vodka in my mouthhole!”
Craig nodded as he picked up the bottle and removed the cap. He leaned over toward Clyde and lined up the bottle to his mouth before pouring. Craig’s spatial perception was not particularly sharp when altered by alcohol, however, and he ended up pouring the half of the vodka into Clyde’s mouth and half down his shirt.
“Oh fuck! I’m sorry, dude,” Craig laughed.
“How are you such a good aim in the game when you’re drunk, but you can’t aim for shit in real life?” Clyde’s voice was somewhat annoyed, but his smile let Craig know he wasn’t actually angry.
“Dunno,” Craig said, taking a swig from the bottle. “But it’s not like the shirt is ruined.”
“Dude, this is my favorite shirt!” Clyde pouted.
“It’s a faded Naruto shirt that I’m pretty sure you got in high school,” said Craig as he capped the bottle and put it down next to him.
“Exactly! This is, like, vintage! A fucking collectible!” Clyde pointed at the shirt, barely able to contain his laughter.
“You’re a fucking collectible,” Craig laughed.
Clyde scooted toward the edge of the bed. “I’m gonna go clean up. I want to drink vodka, not wear it like cologne.”
“You would pour that much cologne on you,” Craig laughed.
“I take back what I said about you being a bitch. You’re not just a bitch, you’re a super-bitch,” said Clyde, swaying as he stood up. He grabbed a clean shirt from his closet and disappeared into the darkness of the hallway.
Craig smiled and lied back on the bed. He folded his arms behind his head and sighed happily. He had made it through the week, and tomorrow he was marrying his best friend—well, second-best friend. It had been a hard time not being able to see Tweek’s sleepy face in the morning, nor being able to hear Tweek's voice whisper goodnight against his neck before they drifted off to sleep at night. It had been a really hard time. . . hadn’t it? He honestly hadn’t thought about how much he missed Tweek until this very moment. Wedding prep had successfully kept him busy and Clyde had kept him sufficiently entertained in the downtime. Craig had barely thought about Tweek once since they went off to their respective best bros’ houses. He hadn’t thought about him at all. He hadn’t even dreamt of Tweek.
Craig bolted upright, a pang of guilt gnawing at his insides. How could he face Tweek at the altar tomorrow? Tweek would know. He’d be able to tell that Craig was a lying phony. He’d be able to look into Craig’s eyes and know that while his lips were saying ‘you are my one and only, my everything’, it clearly wasn’t true. If Tweek really was his everything, he wouldn’t have needed Clyde, right? He wouldn’t have needed to spend the week away from Tweek to build up the suspense because he wouldn’t be able to bear a single moment away from him, right? That’s the mark of a healthy romantic relationship, right?
Craig burped and felt a brief wave of nausea wash over him. It was gone as quickly as it came. He shook his head, trying to get his mind thinking clearly. He felt panicked. A small smile came to his lips as he thought about how this must be how Tweek feels all the time. He thought about all of Tweek’s little anxious quirks. How Tweek’s eye muscles twitch and his hands wring together. How his chest rises and falls when he’s breathing too fast. How he unknowingly licks his lips. His pink, soft lips. Craig really did miss his lips. Craig couldn’t wait to feel his lips against him again—and in every way imaginable.
Craig groaned. Somehow his brief moment of panic had led to him being incredibly turned on. Perhaps it was his abstinence over the past week finally catching up with him, or perhaps it was because he tended to get horny when he was drunk. Either way, he was at half-mast and needed to call Tweek.
Craig crawled around on Clyde’s bed, searching for his phone. He couldn’t quite remember where it had ended up since their bachelor’s bro night had begun, but he needed to find it fast. He threw the pillows onto the floor before pulling the sheets back, causing the pizza boxes to fall to the floor. His phone was not there.
Clyde wandered back into his bedroom to find Craig climbing across his bed on all fours. He cocked his head to the side while Craig moved from the bed to the floor.
“The fuck you doing, dude?” he asked.
“I gotta find it!” said Craig.
“Find what?”
“My phone!” Craig opened up each pizza box, lifting up the remaining slices, just to make sure his phone didn’t somehow end up underneath.
Clyde hesitated. He knew the answer already but decided to go ahead with the question. “Why do you need your phone when you’re drunk at one in the morning?”
“Cause I need to talk to Tweek, like right now.” Craig stood up and opened Clyde’s closet, tossing his clothes out onto the floor.
“Du-dude! Stop that!” Clyde grabbed Craig around the shoulders and pulled him away. “The fuck is wrong with you? I go to the bathroom for a few minutes and now you’re like a horned-up monster! There is never a good reason to drunk dial someone, no matter how horny you are. Trust me . I have fucked up so many relationships that way.”
Craig struggled against Clyde’s strong grip. “My near twenty-year relationship is not going to get ruined just from a drunk phone call, you pleab! I’m just going to call Tweek and tell him that I made a terrible mistake and I love him. Then maybe just a little phone sex.”
Clyde’s eyes widened. “Dude! No! If you call Tweek right now and drunkenly tell him you made a terrible mistake and you love him, he is going to think you cheated on him, and probably with me!” He tightened his hold on Craig.
“What? That’s ridiculous! I would never cheat on him!”
“Sure, but trust me! Every drunken phone call that has someone apologize for some terrible mistake, it’s because they cheated!” yelled Clyde.
“You’re just saying that because no one’s loved you the way that I love Tweek and Tweek loves me!”
Clyde’s face fell and his arms relaxed enough for Craig to slip out. Craig continued to rummage around the room for a moment before he had a moment of clarity within his drunken haze. “Wait! I left it on the kitchen table when I took the pizza from the guy!”
Craig dashed out of the bedroom, down the hall, and to the kitchen. There was his phone, right on the table. He picked it up and swiped across the screen. He squinted at the phone, having trouble focusing his eyes long enough to find Tweek’s name. “Man, this is so much harder than usual,” he muttered.
Just as he had found Tweek’s name and was about to hit the call icon, Clyde came barreling down the hall. Pouncing onto Craig’s back, he grabbed at the phone, trying to pry it out of Craig’s hand.
“Dammit, Clyde! Get off of me, you’re too heavy! I can’t hold you!” Craig hollered.
Clyde placed his feet on the floor but didn’t relax his grip on Craig’s hand.
“Don’t do it, Craig! You’re going to regret it!” Clyde begged. “Give me the phone!”
“Never! You don’t understand our connection! I know he wants me to call him! I can feel it!”
Clyde managed to pry the phone from Craig’s hand, but Craig immediately slapped it to the floor with his other hand. They both scrambled to the floor. They reached for the phone with one hand while pushing each other away with the other hand. Craig’s fingertips reached the edge of the phone, only for Clyde’s hand to rush forward, sending the phone sliding out of the kitchen and onto the living room floor.
“Maybe I don’t understand the connection you and Tweek have, but you’re talking like he’s not my friend, too!” said Clyde. He pushed Craig into the refrigerator with his foot, then started to crawl towards the phone. “I know how he gets before big events, and he’s got to be a tangled mess of nerves right now!”
Craig lurched forward, grabbing at Clyde’s ankle. He jerked back on Clyde’s ankle, laying him flat on the floor. “Exactly! That’s why I need to call him right now and reassure him, to tell him I shouldn’t have left him for another man!” Craig crawled past Clyde, heading for his phone.
Clyde pulled himself back up onto his hands and knees. He charged toward the phone, neck and neck with Craig. “Oh my god, that’s even worse! You can not make this call!”
Clyde pulled ahead and reached for the phone. Craig made one last desperate dive, his arms outstretched. Clyde quickly snatched up the phone and rolled onto his back, shoving the phone into the front of his pants.
“There!” he panted. “Now it’s somewhere I know you’ll never go—no matter how gay, no matter how drunk, no matter how desperate.”
“No! Gross! You’re the worst Best Man ever, Clyde! I hate you! I hate you so much!” Craig began to sob like a drunken college girl.
“Come’ere, buddy,” said Clyde, pulling Craig down into a warm embrace. “It’s going to be okay. I think we’re too drunk and too exhausted to keep playing CoD. I think it’s time we got to bed. You have a big day tomorrow.”
Clyde stood up on wobbly legs. He helped Craig up onto his feet, as well. First, they stopped back into the kitchen for a glass of water. Craig sniffled as he took his glass, but smiled briefly when Clyde tapped his glass against his. They then headed into the bathroom, where Clyde helped Craig wash his face and brush his teeth. Finally, they returned to Clyde’s bedroom. Clyde tucked Craig into bed and kissed his forehead goodnight.
He adjusted the front of his pants, trying to make things more comfortable despite the presence of a large smartphone. He refused to remove it until the morning, just in case Craig woke up and stole it back while Clyde was sleeping. He would need to disinfect the phone several times before returning it to him, if only for Tweek’s sanity. Climbing into bed, he felt good about his decisions. Craig might be mad at him in the morning, but as his Best Man, it was his duty to help Craig, even if that meant protecting him from himself.
“Are you ready?” Craig called out from the kitchen. “I don’t want to be late to my own wedding, after all.”
“Yeah, just gimme a minute,” Clyde answered from his bedroom.
In all the wedding morning hubbub, Clyde had left Craig’s phone in his discarded underwear. Not wanting to accidentally put it through the wash later—and knowing that Craig was most certainly going to ask for it later in the day—Clyde went to fetch it at the last minute. He moved into the bathroom and cleaned it thoroughly with a disinfecting wipe. While it was drying, he noticed that the phone had died in the middle of the night.
“Hey man,” said Clyde as he entered the kitchen, “sorry your phone died in the middle of the night. I’ll charge it in the car.”
“Don’t sweat it, dude,” Craig laughed. “Now that I’m sober—and surprisingly not as hungover as I thought I’d be—I realize that you meant well, and honestly, you saved me from a lot of embarrassing apologies today. Thanks to you, Tweek and my little experiment apart from each other was successful. And know I’ll be thinking of you when I reap its rewards later tonight.”
“Please don’t,” Clyde laughed as they headed out the door.
As they turned off onto the road that led to the venue, Craig turned on his phone.
"Six messages?!" he cried out. "Oh no, and they're all from Tweek.”
Clyde glanced at the phone, then back at the road. “I don’t remember you getting any phone calls last night.”
“It doesn’t list anything under missed calls,” said Craig. He stared at the phone in confusion for a moment before sighing and hanging his head when the revelation dawned on him. “You didn’t notice it was dead the whole time either, right?”
“You think I would have fought the phone away from you just for fun?” Clyde laughed. “Nah man, I was just as drunk as you and had no fucking clue that the phone was dead.”
“Oh god, what if it was an emergency and I wasn’t there for him!”
“Then I don’t think he would’ve tried calling six times and leaving a new message each time it went straight to voicemail. Also if it was an emergency, both Tweek and Kenny have my number, so I think they would’ve tried that when they couldn’t reach you.”
“Thanks, Clyde. You’re a good friend, and an amazing Best Man,” said Craig. “Now...we’re definitely going to listen to these voicemails, right?”
“I’m surprised you’ve waited this long to play them.”
Craig connected his phone to the car’s Bluetooth and played the oldest message first.
“Heeeey Craig. . .I know that we decided to spend the week apart before the wedding. . .and I know we agreed that we wouldn’t see or hear or talk to each other in that time, but. . .like, Kenny and I just smoked a bowl together while reminiscing about high school and shit and it made me really miss you. . .so I decided to call you and tell you that. Please don’t be mad at me. Kay, love you, bye.”
“Oh no,” said Craig. “Fuck, they’re all going to be rambling stoned Tweek messages.” He turned to Clyde, pleading for mercy with his eyes.
Clyde pulled into the venue’s lot and parked. “Nope. We’re listening to all six, buddy. Consider it punishment for how badly you wanted to drunk dial him last night. Now play the next one.”
“Fuck, Craig, I have never been so horny in my entire life. I wish you were here right now cause I’d mount you like a—”
“Okay okay! You can skip that one, please!” said Clyde.
“Babe! Okay, so I’ve been thinking really hard about this for the last two hours and I think I’ve figured it out. Okay, so, like, caffeine is really addicting, right? And coffee is full of caffeine, right? And so many people are addicted to coffee and caffeine, right? So, like, I think I’ve totally broken through the world government’s conspiracy to make everyone addicted to caffeine so they can control us more easily. It all starts in the country that exports the most coffee beans. . .I don’t know which country that is, but it totally starts there, and. . .”
The voicemail went on for another eight minutes. They listened to the rest of the messages, suffering through Tweek’s stoned, and sometimes paranoid, ramblings. It was cringeworthy, to say the least. However, by the time they reached the end, Craig was smiling.
“Tweek can be a bit of a trainwreck sometimes,” he said. “But fuck if I don’t want to spend the rest of my life with that trainwreck.”
Clyde clapped his hand onto Craig’s shoulder. “You’re a bit of a trainwreck, too, my friend. So you guys are perfect for each other.”
Craig snorted. “Thanks. I love you, bro.”
“I love you, too, man.” They both leaned in for a hug. When they broke the embrace, Clyde placed his hand on the car door handle. “Now let’s go get you two married.”
Walking out of the ceremony, hand-in-hand and officially husbands, Tweek and Craig headed into the back of the limo that would whisk them away to their reception. Tweek rested his head on Craig’s shoulder.
“I missed you,” he said.
“Ditto,” Craig laughed. “More than you may ever know.”
“Did you have fun with Clyde this week?”
“Yeah. I mean, it was exhausting making those stupid decorations, but he always knows how to make me laugh and feel at home.” Craig looked down at Tweek’s fingers laced between his own. “What about you? Did you have fun with Kenny this week?”
Craig felt Tweek’s hand twitch and his body stiffen, then relax.
“Yeah. We just hung out like old times, you know?”
Craig hummed. “Did you leave a lot of voicemails back then when you guys got stoned together?”
Tweek turned his head to smother his face in Craig’s tux jacket. “Oh my god, I am so sorry!” he said, his voice muffled by the fabric. He let out a guttural scream into the jacket, then pulled away to breathe. “Fuck, I forgot I left those! I’m so sorry I tried to break our arrangement. I can’t believe you had so much self-control and didn’t answer. I was fine at the beginning, but by last night, I missed you so much it hurt a little bit.”
“You don’t have to apologize,” laughed Craig. “It was a stupid arrangement in the first place. Plus, I didn’t have the self-control you think I did.”
Tweek curiously cocked his head to the side.
“I tried calling you last night—well, early this morning. Like one-ish. I was shitfaced and would have called you to say I was sorry and I made a huge mistake—meaning that it was a mistake to spend the week apart. Thankfully for me, Clyde knew better and fought the phone away from me before shoving it under his junk. He knew what it would sound like for me to say that sort of thing while drunk.”
“Yeah, I would’ve freaked out,” said Tweek.
“Of course it didn’t really matter much,” Craig continued, “cause it turns out the phone was dead the whole time. That’s why you kept going to voicemail.”
“Well, now I feel less guilty about breaking our agreement by calling you,” Tweek laughed. “I suppose the lesson here is that we don’t do well apart for too long.”
“I guess it’s a good thing we’re married then, huh?” said Craig with a smile. “But. . .some time apart is probably a healthy thing. I did have a really good time with Clyde this week, even if it was a mess at the end.”
“Same with me and Kenny. Although he did not stop me from calling you,” laughed Tweek. “He was too busy watching bad horror movies. But it’s been so long since I’ve really connected with him. I don’t want to lose that again.”
“I’m glad we’re on the same page.”
Craig kissed the top of Tweek’s head and rubbed his shoulder as they continued to the venue. He smiled, thinking about Clyde, the past week, and everything Clyde had done for him over the years. He might not be the most important man in his life, but he certainly was the best.