Grey wakes up Ana a few hours later.  She has half an hour before they have to leave for dinner with his parents.  (This was mentioned before, in case I forgot it.)  Why would you give someone only half an hour to get ready for that?  Well, Ana drags herself out of bed and does it only 15 minutes, including a shower, so I guess she doesn’t bother to do her hair or anything.  No wonder she’s always complaining about having terrible hair; she walks around all day with bed-head.

You know, there’s a difference between “doesn’t measure up to the standards set by mass media because they are physically impossible” and “doesn’t put any effort in before going to meet the boyfriend’s parents.”  A bit of grooming for a social situation is not the same as being vain.  At least it’s not as bad as in other books.  Here she just ignores grooming.  Other places you get characters actively bashing people who put in effort, and yet they manage to be the object of everyone’s praise just by rolling out of bed.

Grey hasn’t laid out her panties with the rest of her clothes, so Ana assumes he wants her to ask for them back so she’ll embarrassed.  Ana decides to go commando instead, and she spends an inordinate amount of time feel pleased over this fact.  Unless you’re planning to spread your legs too far while getting out of a car in front of a bunch of paparazzi, there’s nothing especially daring about going commando.

She goes down to meet Grey, and he decides he wants to dance around the living room with her.  How completely random.  I mean, sort of a sweet gesture, but it doesn’t fit very well with Grey’s character.  Maybe if Elliot did it, I’d call it a cute interlude.  Here, it does nothing except transparently attempt to paint Grey as a romantic character, when we already know he’s not.

Ana dithers a while more in the elevator about how she doesn’t have any panties.  She’s got a decently long skirt on.  I’m still failing to see the drama.  His parents aren’t going to know the difference.

In the car, Ana asks where he learned to dance.  Mrs. Robinson taught him.  Ana spends even more time being jealous of a child-rapist. 

This book has a particular talent for making me hate it on multiple levels.  There’s several ways to read this bit, depending on how much you want to blame on bad writing.  See, the books don’t treat Mrs. Robinson as a rapist, or give any hint at all that a grown woman having sex with a 15 year old boy is wrong.  So if I enter this fantasy world where child rape is okay, then I hate Ana for being petty and jealous, and also for thinking that Mrs. Robinson ‘broke’ Grey with all her kinky sex.  In this fantasy where everyone matures in monkey-years instead of people-years, Grey is a consenting participant, and he didn’t get ‘broken’ by the kink but probably liked it.  He did stay for six years after all, and he consistently speaks fondly of her.  If I stay in the real world where child rape is wrong, wrong, wrong, then I hate Ana for never admitting that and treating the kinky part as being the problem, instead of realizing that any kind of sex would have been just as wrong.  No matter how much leeway I give this book, it still manages to be full of horrible, horrible people.

They make it to his parents’ house, which is huge and awesome.  His dad’s name is Carrick.  Mia shows up, and…she’s a tall version of Alice Cullen.  Basically.  She’s also instantly best friends with Ana.  Hugs her right off and walks around holding her hand.  They go inside to greet Kate and Elliot, too, because this is going to be a double-meet-the-parents thing.

Ana angsts for a while as she convinces herself that the only reason Grey asked her over is because Elliot asked Kate.  She figures Grey thought Kate would tell Ana about it, so he felt pressured into inviting her.  Except…Grey already told her that he doesn’t ‘do the girlfriend thing,’ and he hasn’t shown any particular care for what she thinks before now.  Ana’s just creating drama where there isn’t any.

They all drink booze.

Ana mentally chastises Kate for being too happy.  Yeah, we’ve moved on from slut-shaming Kate to…whatever the fuck this is.  Apparently it’s undignified to grin too much while sitting on a couch with one’s lover. 

It’s like Ana has decided to change her world-view so that her and Grey’s relationship is defined as ‘normal,’ and thus when she sees an actual normal relationship she has to think the worst of it.  Because if she were to admit that it’s okay for Kate to be happy, she would have to wonder why she’s not that happy, too.

Ana randomly mentions that she wants to go visit her mother for a few days.  Well, random to us, not the conversation.  The last time this came up, it was a few short lines of inner narration, and she decided not to go.

WTF, and she’s leaving tomorrow?  Has she made plans?  Booked a flight?  Told her mother?

Well it turns out that Grey is pissed at all this.  For once…yeah.  Why didn’t she tell him?  Not to ask permission or anything, but it would be considered common courtesy to mention going out of town for an extended trip.  Maybe I’m feeling more sympathetic to Grey’s reaction because I’m having the same one.  Just, where did all this come from?

“What about our arrangement?”

“We don’t have an arrangement yet.”

1) Ana has verbally agreed to the contract multiple times.  2) The contract doesn’t say she can’t leave town during the week, it only says she has to be available on the weekend.  So they’re both wrong.

They all sit down to dinner, and Kate antagonizes Grey by mentioning that Ana went to a bar with Jose.  It’s out of the blue and rather rude, mostly just in how she says it so pointedly.  Then Grey gets twitchy and jealous.  Again, hate on multiple levels.  If we ignore that Jose sexually assaulted Ana and that plot was never resolved, then Grey is a controlling asshole who’s trying to isolate her from her friends.  If we accept that Jose sexually assaulted Ana, then it makes sense that Grey wouldn’t want her around him, if just because he would be worried that Jose would try it again.  (He still has no right to stop her, but I’d say he’s justified in asking her not see him, or at least being upset about it.)  But in that case, Ana, what the fuck are you doing going to a bar with that boy?

The maid is blond.  Either she has the hots for Grey, or is one of his past subs, because they have an Across The Room Glance.  Ana gets jealous, and continues to think the worst of her throughout the meal.  She doesn’t even think of her by her name, Gretchen, but instead as “European Pigtails.”

Grace gets a call from the hospital, all so that she can come back and talk about measles and how glad she is that her kids never had any bad pox diseases.  This is just here for Ana to realize that the scars on Grey’s chest aren’t from pox.  (To realize later, that is.  She doesn’t do so in this chapter.)  It’s a huge, clunky, awkward hint that has authorial fingerprints all over it.  Especially since it’s not needed to begin with.

Blah, blah, blah.  Boring family dinner and small talk.

Ana has progressed to calling Grey “Fifty Shades” in her mind.  Random capitals and everything.  I wonder if this was in the original fanfic, or if it got shoehorned in there when the author changed the title.

After dinner, Grey gives Ana a tour of the house.  Mia and Grace are doing dishes, despite the fact that they clearly have a wait staff.  If this book were any better written, I would let it slide, because my family treats doing dishes like a social event.  I can easily imagine wealthy people enjoying household chores.  But everything has been so consistently mismanaged that I can’t help but think that the author just forgot that the maid would probably handle that.

Grey takes Ana out to see the ‘backyard,’ which of course is huge and mansion sized.  Then he yanks her across the yard to the boathouse, over her protests, because he says he ‘needs’ to spank her and then fuck her.  If she weren’t so reluctant, I wouldn’t have a problem, because sex-with-a-slight-chance-of-being-caught can be pretty hot.  I could even forgive him saying that he ‘needs’ to do it, because that could be part of his Dom persona.

However, Ana is being dragged into this, all unwilling, and he’s demonstrated that he really is that much of a bastard, not playing the part of one for a sex game.  So everything that I would be willing to roll with in a good book, I just fucking hate in this one.