She moans in response, but still doesn’t blink.

I look over my shoulder and see George is still fast asleep. Obviously he isn’t going to be any help here.

“Can you tell me what happened here tonight?”

Another moan coupled with a bit of a whimper. Still no blinking.

How long can someone go without blinking before they go blind?

I feel like I walked into a horror movie and found the sole survivor of a serial killer rampage. I'm afraid to say the wrong thing for fear I’ll spook her and will never get to the bottom of the truth.

“I ate cookies,” she finally mutters.

“Wow, that’s great, sweetie,” I tell her kindly.

I don’t really know if that’s great or not but at least she has ingested something that will sop up whatever it is that's turned these guys into chocolate covered zombies.

“I don’t want to feel this anymore,” she says in a pitiful voice. “Make it stop.”

Maybe I should try and get her to throw up. Should I stick my fingers down her throat? I’ve never done that before. Not even to myself. I’ve only ever tried to make Drew throw up, and usually all I have to do is talk about his grandmother having sex.

I reach over and take the dripping spatula out of her hand and set it on the floor. I do the same with Drew’s cell phone, flipping it over first and noticing it's set to the BIC Lighter app, the fake flame flickering back and forth on the screen.

“Honey, why are you holding Drew’s phone against the wall?”

“I wanted to make hot. Stupid fight wouldn’t lire. Flight wouldn’t flier. Fire wouldn’t fire. Fire. Fire, fire, fire, fire, fire-”

Sweet Jesus.

I slide an arm between Claire’s back and the wall and bring her forward so she's leaning over her bent knees. Hoping she won’t hate me for this or bite me, I push my finger passed her lips and into her mouth. She blinks then and looks up at me, trying to focus on my face. My finger is in her mouth but she won’t open her lips, they just stay wrapped around my finger while she squints and tries to see me better.

I wiggle my hand and try to push my finger in further. Her throat has to be in there somewhere. If I can just get back there far enough I'm sure she will puke.

“Come on, Claire. Open up wider. I can’t get it in.”

I grunt with the effort of holding her up and trying to get the knuckle of my first finger past her teeth.

“Don’t bite me. You’ll feel much better after this is done, I promise. I’ve done this a bunch of times, just let me in.”

Either she isn’t hearing me or she doesn’t care. I move my hand around her mouth and try every angle I can but she just won’t open her mouth so I could reach her throat. Her tongue presses against the tip of my finger preventing it from moving.

“Claire, don’t be difficult,” I groan. “I need to do this deeper.”

Claire bites down on my finger at the same time I feel a hand slap down on my shoulder.

I yank my finger out of her mouth and whip my head around and up to find George towering over me with his hands on his h*ps and a glare on his face.

“Carter,” George greets.

“Hi, Mr. Morgan,” I say as cheerfully as possible, considering he's looking at me like I'm a bug he's getting ready to squash under his shoe.

“Have you seen my shotgun?” he asks.

I gulp loudly and try to remember all of the reasons it would be bad to piss my pants right then. Under normal circumstances, I'm quite used to the death stares and silent threats I receive from Claire’s dad, but this seems a little excessive. I'm trying to save his daughter’s life. How can he possible be angry with me about that? He had been asleep on the couch two seconds ago. He must have opened his eyes and seen me...

You’ll feel much better once this is done. Don’t be difficult, I need to do this deeper. Just let me in…

Oh sweet Jesus. He had probably looked across the room and saw just the back of me trying to force something in his daughter’s mouth.

Why the hell couldn’t Rachel have been the one here tonight? She would have woken up and cheered me on, probably even booing me when she found out I was only trying to make her daughter puke instead of forcing my penis in her mouth.

“I am NOT into Necrophilia,” I state firmly to him.

“There is something wrong with you,” he mutters.

“I just wanted her to throw up,” I complain.

“I really don’t want to know about the weird, kinky shit you’re into.”

“Yo, Mr. Morgan, you’re awake!” Drew exclaims as he lounges in the doorway. “And Carter, dude, it’s called Poutiphilia. You just told Claire’s dad you weren’t into banging dead people. Which is a good thing, but probably not what you were going for. Poutiphilia is a person who enjoys sexual relations with people who are passed out.”

Drew is a walking, talking Urbandictionary dot com.

“I was NOT trying to have sexual relations with this woman!” I shout.

“Slow your roll there, Clinton,” Drew says as he came further into the room and squats down next to me.

“HOW ARE YOU DOING, CLAIRE?” Drew yells, talking to her slow and loud like she doesn’t understand English. “DO YOU KNOW WHO I AM?”

He snaps his fingers in front of her face a few times. She finally blinks and looks up at me.

“Make it stop,” she whines.

I'm not sure if she is referring to Drew or whatever is in her system. I decide to err on the side of caution and punch Drew in the arm.

“What the f**k did you give her?”

“Just some cookies. My mom makes them for my uncle all the time and he loves them,” Drew tells me.

“Did you guys get food poisoning or something? Why the hell is this place such a disaster and Claire is almost comatose?”

I briefly wonder if I should try again to make her puke, but I'm a little afraid George really does have a shotgun hidden somewhere in the room.

“Claire wanted some help coming up with some new ideas for things to cover in chocolate. It was a process. A creative process. You wouldn’t understand. It’s an artistic thing,” Drew explains. “Chocolate covered carrots were a bust, but we might have something with chocolate covered gummy bears.”

This still doesn’t make any sense. I'm obviously missing something.

“So you guys ate some cookies and brainstormed. What kind of cookies did you eat? Were they undercooked?”

Maybe Claire has Salmonella poisoning. Is that contagious? Does she need to be vaccinated or have her stomach pumped? I feel like I should know the answer to this since I have a kid. What if Gavin eats some raw chicken and I don’t know whether to give him mouth-to-mouth or Pepto Bismol? Is he even allowed to have Pepto? And where the f**k is he getting raw chickens from?!

“Dude, I’m not Betty f**king Crocker or anything. I don’t know what was in the cookies. They were mocha coffee nut something or other. Wait, maybe it was the nuts. Is Claire allergic to nuts? She might be going into anal flaccid shock,” Drew says nervously.

Oh my God. It’s like he shares a brain with Jenny.

“It’s Anaphylaxis Shock, dumbass, and no, she’s not allergic to nuts,” I say with a roll of my eyes.

“My uncle begs my mom for these cookies. Seriously. They actually STOP him from getting sick so this makes absolutely no sense. My mom makes them for him every couple of weeks before he goes in for chemo.”

I stare at him blankly and repeat in my head the words that just came out of his mouth just to make sure I'm not hallucinating.

“Jesus f**king Christ! You gave her POT COOKIES???

I whip my head around and stare at George in disbelief.

“YOU ate a pot cookie?” I ask incredulously.

“I was in Nam,” he huffs like that's sufficient enough evidence this is perfectly okay. “Where’s my grandson?”

I stare at him in wonder for a few minutes, realizing (not for the first time) that Claire’s father is the epitome of the saying “The man, the myth, the legend”. While everyone else has been one step away from bath-salts-crazy, George has curled up on the couch and slept off his pot cookie high.

“Gavin is with my parents for the night. They’re in town for a wedding and are keeping him overnight at their hotel so he can swim in the pool,” I explain as I tighten my hold on Claire and help her stand up.

“I’m hungry,” Claire announces to no one in particular as she suddenly regains the use of all of her faculties and pushes away from me. Her eyes are bright and clear as she walks out of the office, squeezing her way past Drew, like nothing is wrong.

“Well, it looks like the problem is solved thanks to me. Claire now has a new item to put on her menu and rave about tomorrow during her magazine interview,” Drew states proudly.

“She’s not putting pot cookies on the menu,” I tell him with a shake of my head as we all amble out of the office. “It’s illegal.”

“You’re a real buzz kill, you know that?” Drew complains.

16. Son of a Face Turd

“I eat my poop.”

“Drew, I swear to God if you don’t stop playing with that f**king computer, I’m going to shove it up your ass,” I threaten as I finished chiseling the last bit of chocolate off of the walls of the shop kitchen.

Drew has recently learned how to turn on text-to-speech in Microsoft Excel. Everything he types into a box on the spreadsheet is repeated back to him in a computerized voice. He had stopped by my shop first thing this morning under the guise of helping me clean but instead has spent the majority of his time making the computer say random, stupid shit.

“I like to touch boobs,” the monotone, computerized voice announces.

“Boobs, boobs, boobies, boobs. I like boobies.”

Drew sticks his head out of my office a few seconds later and smiles.

“Claire Bear, do you have a pot hangover?”

I growl as I throw the dirty rag into the sink and turn on the tap to wash my hands of the sticky mess they’d become since I started cleaning up the mess we made of the kitchen the previous night.

“After what you did to me last night, you’re lucky I’m not shoving a spatula in your eye.

I turn off the water and dry my hands on the towel next to the sink. When I look back over my shoulder to throw another insult at Drew, he isn’t there.

“Claire has an angry vagina.”

I roll my eyes and take one last look around the kitchen to make sure I haven’t missed a spot. In hindsight, I should know better than to eat anything Drew gives me. He always looks guilty and says stupid shit though, so when he hands me the cookie and tells me to “Eat the entire thing or else,” I don’t think twice. All I had wanted was a nice, quiet evening of brainstorming and keeping my mind off of anything to do with weddings and marrying the man of my dreams.

Be careful what you wish for.

I had woken up this morning with a sinking feeling in the pit of my stomach that I did something stupid. I rolled over and found Carter sitting on the edge of the bed staring at me.

“I was just getting ready to stick a mirror under your nose to make sure you were still breathing,” Carter said with a laugh as he stood up from the bed and walked over to the dresser to put on his watch and stick his wallet in his back pocket.

“What the f**k did I do last night?” I groaned with a raspy, morning after voice.

“Which part exactly are you referring to? Eating an entire pot cookie or redecorating the shop by painting the walls with chocolate?”

“Okay, first of all, I didn’t KNOW it was a pot cookie until after I took the first bite and second…I don’t know. I have no excuse for the rest of it,” I trailed off.

“If you knew it was a pot cookie after the first bite, why in the hell would you keep eating it?” Carter asked with a chuckle as I scooted up in bed until I could sit against the headboard.

“Why wouldn’t I eat it? The damage was already done. And it was a delicious cookie.”

Carter shook his head at me and sighed.

“Claire, you are only supposed to eat a little bit of a pot cookie, never the entire thing at once.”

He stared at me like I was an idiot and this was clearly something everyone knew.

“How in the f**k am I supposed to know something like that? Do I look like the type of person who goes around eating pot cookies all the time?” I asked angrily.

“Everyone knows this. I’ve never eaten a pot cookie, and I still know the rules.”

“The rules? Is there a Pot Cookie 101 class I missed or something? It’s not like the f**king thing came with an owner’s manual. I was handed a cookie, and I ate a cookie. Who in their right mind only takes one bite of a cookie and then puts the rest back for later?” I demanded.

“Someone who eats a pot cookie,” Carter deadpanned.

After I had showered and dressed, I left the house with an obvious bug up my ass.

And now my magazine interview is in an hour and the only things surrounding me are bad, hallucinogenic ideas – chocolate covered gummy bears, pickles, moon pies, M&M’s, every Little Debbie snack treat imaginable from Twinkies to Swiss Rolls, and a computer printed picture of Drew’s hand covered in chocolate. Trays of chocolate covered crap litter the counters, and I berate myself for all of those hours we spent NOT coming up with a good idea. At least Drew manages to frost all two-hundred cookies for the order that's being picked up today. It makes my hatred for him go down just a tiny bit.

“The peanut butter on your c**k is delicious.”