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Chapter Forty Nine

"Pot?"

"Are you sure?"

AJ smirked. "I've had a couple edibles in my day."

"I ate pot?"

Liv looked like she was about ready to freak out. I didn't know if that was the brownies kicking in or just the reaction to learning those amazing brownies were laced with weed.

"Dude, when did we start to eat them?"

"How long do you think it's going to take that guy to come back with gas?"

"Should we call 911?"

I held out my cellphone.

"We have no service."

Everyone got quiet as my announcement sank in.

"What do we do?" Liv finally asked.

AJ leaned his seat back and propped his legs up. "Just relax."

I knew from my own experience that you got a pretty instant effect when you smoked pot. I had a feeling that digesting it made the full effect of the hit take longer.

After about fifteen minutes, I got bored with the uneasy silence. By my estimates, it had been a little over an hour since we had started snarfing the brownies. I was just about ready to break out a deck of playing cards when Liv began to giggle.

It appeared that Liv was the lightweight of the group. Leighanne turned around. "Oh crap, are you okay?"

Liv nodded. "Yeah, it's just...there was pot in those brownies."

I tried really hard not to laugh. There was a glazed look in Liv's eyes and she was looking around as if she just realized that she was on a bus.

"Oh crap, I can't feel my feet."

I stood up and snorted. Two rows ahead of me Howie was hunched over staring at his legs.

"Has Howie ever had pot before?" AJ called out to the room in general.

"Not that I can remember," I said.

"Just checking."

"I'm going outside to see if I can get cellphone reception," Brian said. He stood up. He took about three steps towards the front of the bus and stopped.

"Woah."

"What?"

I assumed that the full impact had hit him and he was seeing litte Jerry Garcia bears dancing in front of his eyes. Instead he pointed to the front window.

"It's snowing, bad. And my heart's racing. I think I need to pray. Does anyone else want to pray?"

He wasn't kidding. The snow was falling so hard that it looked like our windshield would be completely buried in minutes. Besides that, his eyes were bugging out of his head.

"SIT DOWN!"

This time it was Leighanne. She stumbled after Brian and body tackled him to the ground. AJ started to laugh.

"I think this is going to be the best night of my life," he said.

Addy was the next one to lose it. One minute Kev was discussing going out and trying to get to the gas station and the next minute Addy was stripping.

"I want a baby," she whined. Kev looked like he wanted to crawl under the seat and hide.

"That looks like a really good idea," Liv said. "My clothes are itchy. Is anyone else itchy?" I grabbed her hands just as she went for the bottom of her coat. Kev was struggling with Addy. Our eyes met.

"What's going to happen when this stuff kicks in for us?" he asked. I smiled.

"Maybe it won't kick in for AJ and me. Maybe not for you either. I mean if you can look like Snoop Dogg, maybe you can handle pot like Snoop. If not, you can give Addy that baby."

"I think I'm going to be sick," I heard Molly say quietly. I looked over. AJ was helping her to her feet.

"I can't feel my arms!" she moaned. "Oh fuck, I'm the worst mother in the world. Shelby's mother is a pot head. AJ, she can't eat brownies ever again, okay? Okay?"

Liv's hands were floating to my jeans. I took her hands in mine and watched AJ help Molly into the bathroom. He let her go once they were at the door and she went tumbling in.

"Fuck," he said. He stepped in and closed the door behind him.

"Nick?" Liv whispered. I looked at her. Her eyes couldn't seem to meet mine.

"What?" I whispered back.

She leaned into me. I think she was aiming for my ear but she pretty much dived into my neck.

"I'm horny."

Now here's the thing. Under any normal circumstance I would have so loved for her to say that. But unfortunately, I was sitting in a bus that was rapidly filling with people sucumbing to the effects of the brownies and, by the way the snow was falling outside, I was pretty sure we were going to be buried alive. All they would find when they finally discovered the bus were ten frozen bodies and a half full tray of pot brownies.

"Liv," I whispered back. "That is incredibly sexy, but we need to wait until we get back to Aspen, okay?"

She looked up at me in confusion. Then she started to laugh hysterically.

"Aspen. Asssss-pen."

Brian started to laugh. "Hey, Ass-pen!"

I groaned.

"Shit, where did those colors come from?"

Leigh stood up (obviously her feet still worked, even though Howie's didn't). She reached into the air in front of her. There was nothing there.

Here's the fun thing about being one of the last to lose their mind. It's great to see how pot affects people in different way. You had Leighanne who thought she was a sumo wrestler, Addy and Liv who decided they wanted to be strippers, Howie who's feet kept going numb, Leigh who was chasing invisible rainbows, and Molly who was probably puking her guts out.

Except that the sounds coming from the bathroom did not sound like puke sounds.

They sounded like sex against the bathroom sink sounds.

"I hate to say this," Kev said. "But, I'm suddenly starving."

"There's brownies!" Liv said helpfully. She went to reach for the tray; my arms wrapped around her middle.

I hated to admit it, but my fingers felt numb.

Fuck.

"It's warm in here. Is anyone else warm in here?"

Howie stood up. Leigh looked back at him, touched his nose, and screamed.

"IT'S ON FIRE!"

At that moment I heard a loud thump from the bathroom. I was still holding Liv back. Kev was rooting through a bag looking for food. Addy, now free from Kev's grip, tossed off her boots. Bri was wrestling with Leighanne and laughing his ass off. Therefore, no one was actually capable of stopping Howie as he opened the bus door and threw himself and Leigh out.

"What's this about a fire?" AJ said. He walked out of the bathroom. His pants were around his ankles but he had at least had the decency of pulling his zebra print boxers back up. I saw a very naked arm and shoulder reach out of the bathroom after him. It reminded me of that freaky girl from The Ring.

"Nothing, Howie's hallucinating. Or something," I said. My mouth was feeling like cotton. And Liv was feeling good in my arms.

AJ said something else to ,but my hearing was growing fuzzy. There was a loud moan from outside and then one of the girls inside said something about naked snow angels.

And suddenly that didn't seem like such a bad idea.

I mean, if we were going to die on a bus, at least we should die happy, right?

-----------------------------------

I woke up the next morning in a hot tub filled with red, strawberry-flavored Jell-o. If that wasn't weird enough, I was wearing one of Liv's thongs.

And if that isn't strange enough, somehow we had managed to get back to the villa.

"And the first one wakes up!"

I lifted my head; it felt like a cement truck had run over it. My eyes felt droopy and dry.

AJ was standing in the doorway, calmly sipping from a mug of coffee.

"Holy shit, what happened?"

AJ snickered. "It was the best night of my life."

I closed my eyes. It hurt to blink.

"Was it the best night of mine?"

AJ laughed. "Don't you remember?"

"The last thing I remember is Howie and Leigh jumping out of the bus."

"Oh yeah. Howie did a lot of things last night that he's probably going to regret this morning."

I decided I didn't need to know details. I opened my eyes just a fraction.

"How'd we get back home?"

AJ took another slow sip. "Well, after you went into rainbow land, and I was the last man standing, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I walked the damn mile to the gas station, got some gas and drove us back here."

"What happened to the driver?"

"The gas station was next to a bar. He was 'warming up' over there."

"Okay. One more question. Why am I in Jell-o?"

AJ snickered and pointed. Every muscle in my body screamed as I turned and looked behind me.

Liv and Leighanne were laying right beside the hot tub in little bikinis. Leighanne's hair was a horrible shade of pink.

Brian was in about the same predicament I was. He was wearing tiny little panties and his arms were hanging over the edge of the hot tub.

"I got the girls out but there was no way in hell I was grabbing you guys while you're only wearing thongs. I have my limits. I've just been checking to make sure you don't drown yourselves."

I placed a sticky, dripping hand to my temple.

"I still don't understand."

AJ laughed. "Liv and Leighanne decided it would be fun to do some bikini Jell-o wrestling. And trust me, it was epic. But then you and Bri decided to do your own match and well...not so hot, my friend."

I groaned.

"Hey, don't dispair. You got laid last night. You carried Liv out and joined Howie and Leigh in the snow. I've never seen someone from Florida love snow so much. I'm surprise you both didn't get frostbite on your balls."

"Oh God," I muttered. AJ laughed again.

"Hey it could be worse. Kev ate all the food out of his duffel bag and by the time Addy got the munchies all that was left was to finish off the brownies. Her and Kev finished off the whole rest of the pan by the time we got back here."

As bad as that sounded, I still didn't think it was worse than sleeping overnight in Jell-o. I slowly sloshed my way out of the tub. AJ set down his cup.

"Before you go in, you grab one of Bri's arms and I'll grab the other. That way I can get him out and not feel guilty."

We did a team lift and Bri slide halfway across the floor on his stomach. That was going to hurt once he woke up.

I wiped my feet on a towel and made my way into the bathroom. The cold water seemed to revive me. I was just about ready to step out when the door opened.

Liv walked in slowly. Her dark hair was plastered to her face. A bright red line of dried jello dripped down into her bikini top. She stopped in her tracks when she saw me.

"Hey babe," I said. "You okay?"

"I'm as okay as I'm going to be considering the last twelve hours of my life are nonexistant," she said. "Just tell me one thing."

I smiled. "Okay."

"I didn't sleep with Brian again, right? Because I woke up and he was on the floor and we were all covered in Jell-o and..."

I held up a hand. "No worries. AJ assures me that all we did was have some nice girl-on-girl and guy-on-guy wresting action. But, you did have snow bunny sex with me."

Liv walked around me and turned the shower back on.

"I just want to know where all the Jell-o came from," she muttered.

As I towel-dried my hair, I couldn't help but think that was a very good question.

--------------------------------

"Okay. French fry. Scissor. Frency fry. Scissor."

"Nick, I can't french fry and scissor at the same time."

By late in the day, everyone had managed to wake up. AJ recounted some of the, er, more interesting parts of the evening and eventually all we could do was have a good laugh about it. At least AJ had been conscious enough to make sure no one slept with anyone else's wife and we didn't jump on top of the bus and think we could fly. Finally, Kev suggested we go skiing so we could tell our family something we did on the trip. I'm pretty sure eating brownies laced with marijuana wasn't a story to tell Liv's mom.

Liv had never been skiing before so I had started her out on the bunny hill. For living in a wintery state for almost her whole life, snow and her didn't mix.

"I feel like an idiot," she said. I was standing behind her, my boots crunching in the snow, desperately trying to keep her steady.

"Honey, you just have to lean into it," I said. She leaned forward and toppled over.

I was suddenly reminded of those little Weeble People toys from when I was a kid. Of course, weebles wobbled but they didn't fall down. Liv did. A lot.

"Nick, really, I can just go back to the villa and have some hot chocolate," Liv said. She had more snow on top of her hat then she did under her skiis. I smiled.

"You know I love you even though you're clumsy."

She laughed. "I know."

We shared a nice, cold snowy kiss and I helped her get back to the top of the slope. She gratefully ditched the skiis and headed into the villa. It looked like AJ and Molly had already called it quits too. They're foreheads were touching and it looked like he was holding her mittened hands in his gloved ones.

Even though the trip hadn't turned out quite like I had planned, it had been interesting. Plus, we weren't flying out until early morning. That gave me one more night to get my wish on that bear skin rug. Especially because I couldn't remember anything about our romp in the snow.

And I had a feeling that I didn't need any pot-filled brownies to convince Liv to join me in front of a toasty fire to make smores.

Whatever happened after was just an added bonus.