I have three final papers due this week. Finals week is in two weeks. I don’t understand it, but my point is we’re just kinda gonna jump right in here.
Chapter Eighteen
Christian Grey is driving Ana to a SECRET.
Christian continues to drive past single-story, well-kept, clapboard houses where kids play either clustered around their basketball hoops in their yards or cycling and running around in the street. It all looks affluent and wholesome with the houses nestling among the trees. Perhaps we’re going to visit someone?
Oh, fuck, he’s going to buy her a house and it’s going to take Ana forever to figure out what’s going on, aren’t they?
Hmm . . . I wonder who lives here? Why are we visiting?
Christian glances anxiously at me as he switches off the car engine.
“Will you keep an open mind?” he asks.
AREN’T THEY.
They meet someone named Olga Kelly and Ana gets super jealous of her. Then she kind of stops being a character, but it’s okay, Ana already got mad at her for smiling at her man, so she already served her narrative purpose, that bitch. Christian takes her into the house and it’s a super duper nice house which is empty, save for “the biggest rug I have ever seen”.
Ana hasn’t figured it out yet.
Christian takes her through the house to a room with a breathtaking view of a sunset over a large field, lake, and Island. E L James tries to describe a sunset and I’m pretty sure she’s never seen a sunset.
Vermillion hues bleed into the sky —opals, aquamarines, ceruleans—melding with the darker purples of the scant wispy clouds
To be fair, E L James is from England, so she probably hasn’t ever seen the sun.
As I reluctantly turn my eyes away from the view, he’s gazing anxiously at me.
“You brought me here to admire the view?” I whisper.
Ana still doesn’t know what’s going on! Christian breaks it down for her.
“I want to buy it, demolish it, and build a new house—for us,” he whispers, and his eyes glow, translucent with his hopes and dreams.
Wait, he shows her a beautiful house so he can destroy it and build a different beautiful house? This is like that “the tickets are now diamonds” Old Spice commercial, except instead of diamonds they’re just different tickets.
Ana goes through the house that Christian wants to destroy and falls in love with it, which, given that this is Ana, means weird-ass, one word reactions to things.
- …there’s the eat-in—no, banquet-in— kitchen with family room attached —Family!— a music room…
- Miss Kelly is busily suggesting to Christian how the grounds could accommodate
riding stables and a paddock. Horses!
Ana also later describes horses as “four-legged fiends of Satan”, which is intriguing.
They go to a club that Christian owns to celebrate Ana’s promotion, which, as you may recall, happened because her boss was fired for trying to rape her and then she got his job because she’s been doing such a good job during the one week that she’s worked there. (No, seriously). Also, the club is called “The Mile High Club”.
The next ten pages are an absolutely agonizing scene where they try to get the other as sexually frustrated as possible during dinner through the art of seduction. If you’ve been following along, you know that the art of seduction is not either of their strengths.
How Christian gets Ana all riled up!
- Christian tells Ana to go to the bathroom and take her panties off.
That’s it. Seriously. This book is dumb.
How Ana gets Christian all riled up!
- Ana parts her legs slightly.
- She seductively… eats oysters?
- She hisses at him, asking why he isn’t touching her.
- She hitches her skirt up.
- She thinks “Touch me” a lot. Like… a lotttttttttt
- She runs her fingers up her thighs.
- She seductively eats asparagus, because once wasn’t enough:
Keeping my eyes locked on his, I take the spear in my mouth, and suck, gently . . . delicately . . . on the end. The hollandaise sauce is mouthwatering. I bite down, moaning quietly in appreciation. - She says that she’s “not hungry. Not for food.”
If you’re wondering why Ana was mad at Christian for not having sex with her right then and there when they were, you know, eating dinner at a public restaurant… I have no idea whatsoever.
Anyway, then Christian fingers her in a crowded elevator.
I’m flushed, warm, wanting, trapped in an elevator with seven people, six of them oblivious to what’s occurring in the corner. His finger slides in and out of me, again and again. My breathing. Jeez, it’s embarrassing.
Just in case you weren’t sure how the process works, Ana explains it.
In . . . out . . . in . . . out . . .
Titillating. Just a thought, if you’re writing erotic fiction, and have to explain the sex down to this level? Maybe… maybe you should try harder?
They don’t have sex until they get home because Christian doesn’t want to have sex in a car. There Christian says that he wants to have sex with her on ever surface in the house. So they have sex on the table and call it a night. If you’ve read any of the sex scenes in Fifty Shades, you already know how fucking stupid this is going to be.
“Open!” he growls, tightening his hands on mine and thrusting sharply into me so that I cry out.
The next day, Ana goes snooping in Christian’s apartment and finds a box full of pictures of him in the playroom with his exes, presumably doing all the BDSM that isn’t actually in this BDSM erotic novel. Ana goes to work and something super strange happens – she actually does work. Not that we hear about any of it, of course, just how strange it is that she isn’t in constant contact with Christian and that she hopes he’s okay. She meets up for drinks with Jose for the first time since the first chapter, Elliot because I guess we’re supposed to care about Elliot, and… get this one, guys… MOTHERFUCKING KATE IS FINALLY BACK.
“You’ve lost weight. A lot of weight. And you look different. Grown up. What’s been going on?” she says, all mother hen, concerned and bossy. “I like your dress. Suits you.”
[…] I am not ready for the Katherine Kavanagh Inquisition
Oh, right, I forgot I don’t like Kate.
Oh, and Christian’s missing and his helicopter is missing too.
Even though I know what happens next, I admit I fist-pumped into the air in triumph knowing that there was a possibility that Christian could be dead. Never have I wanted a fictional character to bite it so badly XD
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