Eva Is On Her Period, DON’T FORGET THIS: Reflected In You Chapter 5

Hey, readers! I’ve got a favor to ask of you. A good friend of mine’s family owns a drive-in theater (yeah, I know, those still exist! I need to go find one), and is currently in a contest to win a digital projector, and they’re kinda gonna have to close if they don’t win. It’d mean a lot to me if you’d help me help him help his family out. It’d only take like ten seconds of your time to click this link and then click vote. You don’t even have to watch the video if you don’t want to, although it’s probably a little better morally to know what you’re voting for. We get like 1100 hits a day, so even if you don’t really care about drive-in theaters or doing me a favor, just think how hilarious it would be if they win and someone at Honda sees that a thousand votes were referred by a web page titled “Eva Is On Her Period, DON’T FORGET THIS.”

Anyway, tomorrow will be when the new Good Books, Good Times goes up. Thanks for your patience, everyone. It’s hard to blog when you’re in an airport/airplane for most of a day.

Chapter 5

Speaking of airplanes, Eva and Cary are on Gideon’s private plane! See, I thought I was flying in style this weekend when my plane gave me complimentary peanuts and pretzels, but that was nothing compared to Gideon’s penis plane. (I didn’t even realize Ariel made the same joke in her post yesterday until after I wrote it. This is why we co-run this blog.)

Deep, swiveling bucket seats with tables were positioned on the left, while a sectional sofa sat on the right. Each chair had a private entertainment console beside it. I knew a bedroom would be found at the back of the plane and a luxurious bathroom or two.
A male flight attendant took my duffel bag and Cary’s […] “can I serve you something to drink? […] We’ve got everything.”

Cary isn’t completely impressed, because for some reason he’s concerned that he’s going to die? I have no idea where this came from. He’s never expressed any particular fear of death or airplanes or a combination of the two before, but he’s pretty set on his imminent demise until the flight attendant gets some alcohol in him.

“As far as death traps go,” Cary said, “this one’s pretty swank.”
[…] “You are not going to die. Flying is safer than driving.”
“And you don’t think the airline industry paid for the compilation of those statistics?”

Gideon gets on the plane and just kinda goes into his private room. Eva doesn’t seem to remember anything that happened in Bared To You.

I had determined that I wasn’t going to be small over a guy. Not even Gideon.

But… that was, like, the entire first book? I mean, to be fair, Eva has a difficult past and issues with paranoia, and I’m not faulting her that, but I am calling out that she has forgotten she does this stuff all the time. Hell, she’s probably gonna do it before the end of the chapter. Let’s wait for it together! I’ll make popcorn! We can build a pillow fort! We can talk about girls! I don’t know when my stream of consciousness decided that this was a sleepover!

Cary notices that Eva is upset by this, and gives her some great, Cary-tastic advice:

“Give him a blowjob. That’s a guaranteed mood improver.”

Last night I met up with a high school friend and we talked about blowjobs for a minute or two, then moved on to talk about other things that aren’t sex for the remainder of our four hour conversation, because, unlike the characters in this book, real people do think about things other than sex. Whereas Eva tries to solve all her problems with sex.

[Gideon] glanced up when I walked in, his face showing no surprise at my abrupt appearance. He say at a desk, listening to a woman who was speaking to him via satellite video. […] After that one brief glance at me, he resumed his conversation.
I started stripping.

Isn’t Gideon on a video call? You literally just said that he’s on a video call.

Anyway, you may have noticed that the title of my post is pretty identical to Ariel’s yesterday – both are jokes about how Sylvia Day keeps writing that Eva is on her period. But seriously, I couldn’t think of anything else that really stands out in this chapter. She is unrelenting in her need to inform us of how Eva is on her period. Starting here, let’s count all of them!

1. “I’m the one with PMS,” I said, “but you’re the one having mood swings.”
2. “It’ll probably be next weekend before I’m good to go again, thanks to my period.”
3. “It doesn’t matter if I get a little sore now,” I argued (yeah, they solve their problems with sex again; we’ll get to this)
4. “You never eat a massive pile of carbs this late,” [Cary] noted between bites.
   “My period’s coming.”
5. The scorching sun felt good on my skin, a sensual kiss that was nearly enough to make me less self-conscious about the water I was retaining – thanks to my period starting.

Which is your favorite? My favorite is the last one! Look how tacked on that one last reminder that Eva is on her period is, like Sylvia Day wrote it and thought, “wait, what if they don’t remember that Eva’s on her period?”

Anyway, yeah, there was a sex scene in there, but it’s really not important. You’ve read sex scenes before, right? We’ve read Bared To You and all three Fifty Shades books, so we know the formula by now. Someone talks dirty, someone has an orgasm, and someone’s panties get destroyed.

My panties were ruined, literally shredded by his grip

Do these books’ target demographics have some sort of underwear-destroying fetish? Is that a thing?

Anyway, Eva and Cary get to the pool, and after Eva has spent the past few chapters worried that Gideon might have been unfaithful to her, Eva flirts with a guy at the pool.

“What are you drinking?”
Turning my head, I looked at the man who’d talked to me. “Nothing yet, but I’m considering a mojito.””Let me buy you one. He smiled, revealing perfectly white but slightly crooked teeth. He extended his hand to me, a movement that brought my attention to his nicely defined arms. “Daniel.”
I placed my hand in his. “Eva. Nice to meet you.”
[…] He wasn’t traditionally good-looking, but he had confidence and poise, two things I found more attractive in a man than just his physical features.

At literally no point does Eva think about Gideon, or how she has a boyfriend, but just kind of checks out the guy that she knows is hitting on her. Seriously? All we’ve been reading about for the past few chapters is how worried Eva is about Gideon being unfaithful to her. Hell, it’s part of her striptease rant (“I mean, I’d like to see what you would do […] if you came over to my place and caught an ex-boyfriend stepping outside still tucking his shirt in his pants.”), and here she is behaving exactly the same way! Then a security guard named Sheila comes over and prevents Daniel from buying Eva a drink, insisting she escort her to her cabana.

I blinked at Sheila as realization sank in. Gideon had me under watch.

Eva’s reaction continues down this double-standard line of thinking, when she actually considers making out with the guy in response.

For a minute, I considered making her day hell, maybe grabbing Daniel and kissing him senseless just to send a message to my overbearing boyfriend.

Man, there just isn’t a single likeable character here. Eva comes up with some sort of plan for revenge (for, again, flirting with a guy after lecturing her boyfriend about his suspected infidelity) that involves calling her step-father’s body guard. Then she gets a call from her real dad, whom we have met before and I completely forgot, and he’s described here with the racist-stereotype-tastic “the Latino boy from the wrong side of the tracks”. Cary shows up and Eva says she’ll tell about her plan of revenge (I’m not even remotely excited about where this narrative is going) at dinner.

“What is it with rich people and control issues? […] I prefer our kind of crazy – we pretty much only screw with ourselves.”

Cary, the last book ended with you throwing a house party/orgy that pissed off your best friend, your boyfriend, and a lot of other people. Just shut up, Cary.