Nobody Talks To Each Other, Everybody Has Lunch With Their Exes: Reflected In You Chapter 13

Readers, I have awful news. As a reader kindly warned informed me last week, Sylvia Day’s Bared To You has been optioned by Lionsgate and is in early development as a tv series. Now, Fifty Shades as a movie is one thing, but Bared To You as a TELEVISION SERIES? Good luck making this glorification of abusive relationships and misogyny into something palatable enough that people will come back week after week to… oh, fuck, I just described this blog…

Chapter 13

Last chapter Eva and Gideon were at a high point in their relationship. Naturally, it’s been a whole chapter since they were happy with each other, so it’s time for them to get in a fight again. Like, in the first two paragraphs:

I was stressed from suffering from lack of sleep, which always led to tiny bouts of depression.
I told myself it had nothing to do with Gideon, but the knot in my stomach said differently.

Eva decides to walk to work since she’s running late and hasn’t heard from Gideon yet. She gets a call from Gideon asking, “Where the hell are you?” and they get into a fight, because Sylvia Day just has no idea how to progress the already-flimsy plot without fight scenes, like the Michael Bay of erotic romance.

The similarity is uncanny.
More or less.

At work, Eva gets a Google alert that a celebrity gossip blog has reported that Gideon had dinner with Corinne, his former fiancee! Eva realizes that this means that her boyfriend had dinner with his ex without telling her, and after their heart-to-heart on how uncomfortable Gideon and Corinne’s relationship makes her. Conveniently, Eva’s rock star ex Brett shows up in the lobby of her office building at this exact point in time and Eva decides to go get lunch with him, because for some reason everybody in this novel would much rather have a meal with their ex than actually talk to their significant other.

[Brett] wore black jeans and a Six-Ninths T-shirt.

Wait, seriously? He’s wearing his own band’s t-shirt? Is he actually that much of a tool, or was Sylvia Day really that worried that we’d already have forgotten who he is? Or… or both?

Nobody would know who Jim Morrison was if it weren't for the iconic photograph where he's wearing a Jim Morrison t-shirt.
Nobody would know who Jim Morrison was if it weren’t for that iconic photograph where he’s wearing a Jim Morrison shirt.

Eva reminds us that Brett is attractive, to fill Sylvia Day’s quota of describing attractive people.

Brett was tall and muscular, more muscular than Gideon, who was powerful without any bulk.

Why fucking not?

“So…” He paused as the waiter came by and dropped off two glasses and a chilled bottle of water. “You’re dating Gideon Cross.”
I wondered why that questions always seemed to pop up at a time when I wasn’t sure the relationship would last another minute.

Probably because every single chapter is when you’re not sure if the relationship will last another minute. This is like middle school statistics, Eva.

But then things get interesting different from what we were expecting, at least, when we learn Brett’s very different understanding of his relationship with Eva as he asks her what happened using romantic terminology that is only acceptable to use if you are the adolescent protagonist of “Stacy’s Mom”.

“Why did you write ‘Golden’?” I asked suddenly, unable to hold back my curiosity a moment longer. […]
Brett sat back in his chair. “Because I think about you a lot. I can’t stop thinking about you actually. […] We had it going on for six months, Eva. That’s the longest I’ve ever been with someone.”
“But we weren’t with each other,” I argued. My voice lowered. “Aside from sexually.”
His mouth thinned. “I understand what I was to you, but that doesn’t mean I didn’t get hurt.”

Whaaaaaaaaaa’?

But Eva said that he was the one who was only in it for the sex and she was the one with hurt feelings!

“The way I remember it, we’d hook up after shows, then you’d go about your business. And if I wasn’t there to put out, you’d grab someone else.”
He leaned forward. “Bullshit. I tried getting you to hang out. I was always asking you to stick around.”

Oh my god, you guys, it’s another relationship where Eva and the other dude had zero communication! Nobody in this book ever fucking talks to anyone else! To be fair, I wouldn’t want to talk to any of the characters in this book either, but still! Apparently Eva and Brett’s disastrous falling out was all just a misunderstanding!

“Shit, Eva. I was twenty-one years old. The band was just starting to get popular. The chicks were everywhere.”

Or, you know, it’s not. Brett says he’s not going to give up on her, Eva says that she’s involved with Gideon and that she’s not the right kind of girl for Brett and his lifestyle anyway, Brett says “but you and I are together” (for some reason – no, he actually says this; I have no idea why), Eva says that she’s in love with Gideon, Brett says he doesn’t believe her and says he’s not giving up, while stabbing a piece of meat in a not at all unsettling way.

I bent over and said firmly, “There’s no chance. None.”
Brett stabbed his fork into a slice of his steak. “Prove it.”

Bringing the novel's total number of subplots about men from Eva's past who might harm her up to TWO.
Bringing the novel’s total number of subplots about men from Eva’s past who might harm her up to TWO. Wow. Diverse.

Eva goes back to work and Gideon controls the elevator to bring her and the other random people she’s in the elevator with up until his floor, where he then disables the elevator until he’s finished telling Eva how displeased he is with him. Not a single part of that last sentence was exaggerated, this is actually what’s going on in this goddamn book that someone somewhere thought “gee, this might make a good TV series.”

Gideon reached in, grabbed my elbow, and hauled me out. I struggled […]
“Your behavior today has been appalling,” he growled. […]
I crossed over to the call buttons and hit the down button. It wouldn’t stay lit.
“I’m talking to you, Eva.”

Hahaha, good luck making this a TV show for a romance audience, fuckers.

“Funny how that doesn’t lead to me actually learning anything – like about you going out with Corinne last night.”
“You shouldn’t be snooping around online about me,” he bit out.

Says the man who stalked a woman so thoroughly, he reconstructed her bedroom in his apartment.

“You need to trust me, Eva.”
“You’re making that impossible! Why didn’t you tell me that you were going out to dinner with Corinne?”
“Because I knew you wouldn’t like it.”

Eva tells Cary about the fight when she gets home and Cary – doing something surprisingly useful – points out, hey, maybe she could maybe communicate with Gideon.

“I’m not the guy to ask, Eva.” Cary grabbed my hand and squeezed. “He’s the one with the answers.”
“You’re right.” I went to my purse and pulled out my phone.

Wait, it was that easy to get you people to fucking talk to each other?

“Is everything all right?” he asked.
“No.” I rubbed at my tired eyes. “I miss you.”
He sighed. “I… I can’t talk now, Eva.”

Haha of course not. If they talked to each other, this book would be like thirty pages long.

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0 comments

  1. Bellomy Reply

    Oh man, this line is gold.

    “You need to trust me, Eva.”
    “You’re making that impossible! Why didn’t you tell me that you were going out to dinner with Corinne?”
    “Because I knew you wouldn’t like it.”

    “You need to trust me Eva! When I tell you not to check up on the shit I’m doing, it’s probably because I’m hiding something from you!” You wouldn’t want to figure that out, would you? Man, that would be awkward, huh? Oh, hey, were those people in the elevator too?”

  2. E.H.Taylor Reply

    Just a few moments ago I heard someone say, “I wish I had a relationship like Christian and Ana have”, which her friend replied with, “Or like Gideon and Eva!” I just wanted to yell YOU CAN DO BETTER! HAVE SOME STANDARDS!
    Alas, it is too early in the morning to be dealing with this kind of crap.

  3. Kate Reply

    The fact that we’re supposed to like Gideon as Eva’s love interest in spite of (or because of) the fact that he constantly brutalizes her, combined with the fact that there are no unattractive characters in this series leaves me *terrified* of how the narrative will play out when we inevitably meet Nathan. Sylvia Day writes with all the subtlety of a brick to the face, so it’s obvious that he’s going to eventually make an appearance, but if I have to read any scene in which Eva describes the physical attractiveness of her rapist stepbrother, I won’t be able to read this book anymore.

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