Easley, S.C. — Forty-eight hours before the South Carolina primary, Ted Cruz was roasting Utah senator Mike Lee in the backroom of a barbecue restaurant.

“His wife Sharon will tell you, you know, Mike is living on the edge if he puts a lime in his sparkling water,” Ted Cruz said. “That really is letting his hair down.”

Cruz has spent the past week locking horns with various opponents in the GOP primary, particularly Marco Rubio and Donald Trump. But on Thursday afternoon at Mutt’s BBQ Restaurant, Cruz was all about embracing his friends.

He stood in front of a packed room, flanked by Lee, Iowa representative Steve King, South Carolina representative Jeff Duncan, and Texas representative Louie Gohmert. And though his stump speech was familiar, he peppered it with lines about the buddies who were here to stump for him — and even name checked some who weren’t.

“My good friend Rand Paul,” Cruz said of his recently departed competition, gave him some advice when he was preparing to mount his pseudo-filibuster of Obamacare in 2013: Wear comfortable shoes, and drink very little water to spare your bladder. (Cruz is hoping to win over former Paul supporters, especially in Nevada, a state with a strong libertarian streak.)

Lee, he said, during a riff about the Supreme Court, “would look pretty good in a robe.” Lee was in South Carolina to stump for both Cruz and Rubio, whom he described to reporters as “two of my closest friends in the Senate.” Pressed hard, he declined to even hint at a favorite. But both would like to be seen as his first choice.

And all five of the men on stage, Cruz said, need “tasters” in the congressional dining room because they have so often stood against their own party.

Cruz has often been accused — most often by Trump — of having a poor temperament. Trump is fond of pointing to the number of senators who have gone on the record criticizing Cruz, and the fact that not a single senator has endorsed him for president.

But Thursday afternoon, as smells of barbecue wafted into the back room here, Cruz rhetorically hugged his friends close as he made the case to an enthusiastic crowd.

The setting provided a sharp contrast to the Republican Women’s Club at which Cruz spoke earlier today, where a seated crowd politely cheered, observing decorum in a venue whose dress code does not permit blue jeans. Outside this standing room only event at Mutt’s, people still waiting get in hooted and hollered as Cruz walked off his bus. One woman let out a guttural scream that sounded decidedly at odds with her petite frame.

When Cruz quoted a passage from the Bible, the crowd joined in. “If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land, they recited along with him.

Cruz’s delivery at the event was looser and more casual, as though he was relaxing around his friends.

But Lee, speaking to reporters before Cruz went on stage, seemed less than thrilled to be thrust into the middle of what has become a brutal back and forth between his two closest friends in the Senate. Asked if he thought it was becoming harder to unite in the face of all the “nastiness,” as Cruz and Rubio lob insults and accusations of lying back and forth, Lee demurred.

“Sure. But you know I think that those two campaigns are trying — I certainly hope they’ll continue to try — to stay positive, to talk about what they believe, to talk about what they’re for,” Lee said.