Calendar Girl (February) Chapter 4: Butt Stuff

My mom usually likes all of our posts on Facebook. Today will really be a test of that.

Calendar Girl (February): Chapter 4

The last chapter ended with Alec asking Mia why she doesn’t love herself, just in case you were wondering if any of her call girl assignments weren’t going to be obvious metaphors for character growth.

“I love myself.” The words spilled from my lips like acid hitting bare flesh. […]
“Do you? Could have fooled me,” he responded flippantly before tossing back a heavy slug of the red wine.
“You think you know me? After only a few days?”

Hopefully you enjoyed this chapter’s one brief moment of Mia pointing out that this book’s romantic interest is a huge douche.

This doesn’t last long because of Alec’s ill-defined intuitive nature. Literally ill-defined:

he turned his head and looked at me. That look said it all. Frustration, stubbornness, and something else.

I’m sure that writing a novella a month is a pretty difficult task, but we’re on book 2 and we’re already defining a key component of “said it all” as “and something else”.

“I think I know you better than you know yourself or at least better than you will admit to yourself? […] I get the feeling you’ve spent a great deal of your life taking care of others, oui? […] So now, ma jolie, it’s time you take care of yourself, oui? […] I shall help you. This project, Love on Canvas, will be an outlet. Together, and for the eye of the beholder, we will find you some peace”

Wow, it’s super convenient that Mia, whose primary struggle is that her dad is in a coma overcoming past romantic disasters, keeps getting these clients who want nothing more than to pay her to help her overcome that?

Albeit vis a vis sex. Lest you thought they were doing this out of selflessness rather than because they’re pretty much just plot devices.

His pecs were hard slabs of muscle under the thin fabric of his T-shirt.

I just want to point out that at no point in time have we seen any of these characters go to the gym.

Frenchie wasn’t wearing underwear. Fascinating. […] “You’re not wearing any underwear.”
Alec’s tongue came out to moisten his bottom lip. I stared at that lip like it held all the answers in the universe. “Oui. I do not wear le caleçon.”

OH MY GOD. WE GET IT. HE’S FRENCH. We can stop putting one word from every sentence into Google Translate now, oui?

“They are uncomfortable and unnecessary. Prevent me from getting to what I want faster. For instance, you.”

How fucking long could it possibly take this dude to take underwear on and off?

“I want to taste your beauty on my tongue.”

…on second thought, maybe this book is better when we can’t understand what Alec is saying.

Alec begins to kiss Mia from “my instep, up my ankle, all the way to the back of my knee”.

His eyebrow quirked up almost as if he was asking permission. He waited long moments, his gaze never leaving mine. He was asking my permission.

Huh! I’ll be damned! One of the romance novels we’re reading for this blog actually has a dude making sure he has consent! What a low bar that gets cleared distressingly infrequently! But I guess if there’s one good thing to say about-

I didn’t realize he had a moistened finger circling the secret place no man had ever touched until it was too late.

Oh god fucking dammit.

My hips tried to thrust into the air, but Alec held them down, fucking my ass with his finger as I shook.

WELL NEVER FUCKING MIND ABOUT ALL THAT THEN.

I also feel it’s very important to point out that Calendar Girl has definitely joined the “erotic novels that use words that would probably get me laughed out of the room if I actually used them during sex” ranks.

A thumb twirled around my O-trigger while his thumb searched my heat.

Those are both new ones.

The finger pushed down on the rosette, pressing in while he simultaneously sucked hard on my O-trigger.

I texted a few people while reading this chapter to get some second opinions on whether “O-trigger” was doing anything for them, and no one responded positively, to put it bluntly.

an orgasm coiled tight, starting low at my spine and spreading out over my body like ivy crawling a fence.

Huh. I thought that was actually… pretty well-written? Maybe I’m judging the writing too harshly!

“I’m going to gorge on your sweetness until I taste your cream, chérie.”

But maybe I’m not!

“Fuck me, Alec,” I begged and gripped at the sheets once more.
“Non, pas encore,” he murmured into my flesh.
I didn’t know what that meant, but I did know what encore meant in English, and I was all for that.

Just so you guys know, there is an astounding amount of fingering in this chapter. Sometimes that stuff doesn’t really get conveyed in this chapter-by-chapter summaries, so just know that however much fingering you’re thinking, it is definitely more than that. Eventually they have sex.

I clamped down using my internal muscles

As opposed the external muscles just kinda hanging off the sides of her body, I guess.

“Putain oui,” he said through clenched teeth

Look, Audrey Carlan. You don’t know French. I don’t know French. It’s cool! Sometimes people don’t know French! But it’s really obvious you’re just putting English expressions into Google Translate. A literal translation of “fuck yes” into French isn’t the actual French equivalent of “Fuck yes” (in fact, asking a French-speaking friend about this, they weren’t even sure what the equivalent expression would be because the French don’t really use profanity to express approval in the first place). I don’t even know French and I can tell that you didn’t do any research.

Mia reflects on how great the sex was and how nice it is just lying there afterwards. Things get genuinely interesting as her conflicted emotions drift over to Wes…

Sweet, beautiful, down-to-earth Wes. The one man, the only man I think I could ever truly fall in love with. I took a harsh breath and prevented the tears from coming. I wasn’t cheating. I. Was. Not. Cheating.

But alas, we’re stuck with this garbage boy who speaks in Google Translate French and wants to teach Mia to Love Herself as only an artist can.

“Thank you.” I pulled the sheet up into my chest. […]
His hand came up and held my cheek. “You are my muse, Mia. You were meant to be here.”