Ana opens up the chapter by pointing out that she’s drinking champagne.  At this point in the book, ever mention of alcohol makes me side-eye pretty hard, if just because it’s so damn pervasive.  She banters with Grey over email again, and calls him a stalker again, but once again no one seems to realize that stalking is a bad thing.  And he never does explain how he figured out what flight she was on.  Bribed the airline, maybe?  They’re not supposed to hand out that information.

Ana taunts him by telling him she got a back massage from a male masseuse.

Oh, he’s going to flip out – and I shall be airborne and out of reach.

1) Intentionally antagonizing your lover is a shithead thing to do.  It’s not like he ‘playfully’ flips out when he gets jealous.  It’s not a running joke between them, something that he’s mildly annoyed by but takes in good humor.  No, he really doesn’t like it, and he’s poking him on purpose.  She’s a shitty girlfriend.  2) Why the hell would being airborne make a difference?  Is she worried that he’s going to come all the way to the airport to spank/fuck her?  Well, she probably is, in which case antagonizing him makes even less sense. 

He replies back with a threat.

That’s the problem with Christian’s humor – I can be never be sure if he’s joking or if he’s seriously angry.

If you can’t tell, he’s not joking.  No, seriously, if you’re with someone and you can’t tell if their threats to lock you in a crate are serious or not, get the fuck out.

On the other side of her plane trip, Ana writes another email.

I am completely caught up in your spell, considering a lifestyle with you that I didn’t even know existed until last Saturday week, and then you write something like that and I want to run screaming into the hills. I won’t, of course, because I’d miss you.

Yeah, I’m just going to leave that hanging there.  I don’t think it needs more rage.

You dazzle me

Oh, yeah.  This isn’t Twilight at all.  Uhg.

So she says she wants to be with Grey, even if it means being kinky, but she’s afraid she’ll screw up the submissive part and that’ll make him beat her ‘black and blue.’  Why do neither of them realize that her punishments don’t have to be physical?  Or that they could at least be very light, since her pain threshold is very low, and she wouldn’t get any bruises that way.

We finally get to meet Ana’s mother and Bob.  He gets a description, she doesn’t.  Why?  Why is Bob described as handsome and square-jawed and blue-eyed, but Ana’s mom 1) doesn’t have a name, and 2) is just this vague, person-shaped blob walking through the plot, since we don’t have a clue what she looks like.

Ana used to live in the ‘dry heat of Vegas’ when she was teen.  Not Phoenix.  And this is Georgia, not Florida.  That’s how you can tell this is different from Twilight. 

What to say? I can’t talk about Christian in any great detail because of the NDA, but even then, would I choose to talk to my mother about it?

Wait, so the NDA now covers everything about the man instead of just his tendency toward kinky sex?  Oh, who are we kidding.  The sex is all she actually knows about him anyway.

“Oh, Mom, his mood-swings make me dizzy. He’s had a grim upbringing, so he’s very closed, difficult to gauge.”

“Do you like him?”

“I more than like him.”

So she doesn’t know anything about him except that he has scary mood swings and he’s closed off, but she still ‘more than likes’ him.  Book, do you ever look at yourself and think about what’s in you?  Like, ever?

“Men aren’t really complicated, Ana, honey. They are very simple, literal creatures. They usually mean what they say. And we spend hours trying to analyze what they’ve said – when really it’s obvious. If I were you, I’d take him literally. That might help.”

I gape at her. This sounds like good advice. Take Christian literally. Immediately some of the things he’s said spring into my mind.

I don’t want to lose you…

You’ve bewitched me…

You’ve completely beguiled me…

I’ll miss you too… more than you know…

1) Men are just as complicated as women are, seeing as we’re all people and casting either gender as all being ‘simple’ is really fucking insulting.  Men are individuals who can be as simple or complex as their personalities make them.  2) Ana, how the fuck did you miss all that the first time?  What did you think he was saying?

“I used to think your father was moody. But now when I look back, I just think he was too caught up in his job and trying to make a life for us.”

And…those two thinks can’t both happen at once?  What?

Later, Ana finds a reply email from Grey.

Yes, I’m rich. Get used to it. Why shouldn’t I spend money on you? … I don’t know how to answer your comment about feeling like a whore.

That.  That right there is why you shouldn’t spend money on her.  Because it makes her feel like a whore.  And the way to answer her telling you that is to say “Oh, okay.  I’ll cut back on the lavish money spending.”  God damnit, it’s not all about you, Grey.  Other people are allowed to feel however they want to about your money, and you should respect their feelings, not just roll right over them with a ‘get used to it.’

Then he proceeds to admonish her for feeling like a whore.  Like it’s her fault.  Look, there’s a lot of bad connotations that go along with the word ‘whore’ in our society, but at its base, it just means prostitute.  Someone who takes money or goods in exchange for sex.  If she feels like she’s being bribed into having sex with Grey, then ‘whore’ could be an apt description.  (Mind you, I wouldn’t call her that, but it’s something that would make sense for her to use on herself.  I would just call her an idiot.)

What I think you fail to realize is that in Dom/sub relationships it is the sub that has all the power. … In the boathouse you said no. I can’t touch you if you say no – that’s why we have an agreement – what you will and won’t do.

Pretty words, Grey.  They don’t work, though, because there have been several times she has said ‘no’ and he’s said “Yeah, fuck it, we’re doing it anyway.”  Remember when she said she didn’t want to play with punishment?  Or when she didn’t want to be spanked the first time?  OR THE FACT THAT HE DID SPANK HER AFTER THE BOATHOUSE?

Take him literally, that’s what my mother says. He doesn’t want to lose me. He’s said that twice! He wants to make this work too.

How…how else would anyone take that?  He wasn’t speaking in riddles; he said ‘don’t want to lose you’ in those words.  What is going on in this girls brain that she has to be told to actually listen to words and understand what they mean?

I press send, and immediately the image of that evil witch Mrs. Robinson comes into my mind. I just can’t picture it. Christian being beaten by someone as old as my mother, it’s just so wrong. Again I wonder what damage she’s wrought. My mouth sets in a hard grim line. I need a doll to stick pins in, maybe that way I can vent some of the anger I feel at this stranger.

Good fucking god.  Is the book ever going to let this shit go?  Yeah, she did a bad thing.  BUT IT WAS BECAUSE GREY WAS A CHILD, NOT BECAUSE SHE WAS A DOMME.  Fucking hell, we don’t know anything about what she did except that she was older and a woman.  We don’t know that she physically injured him, or that she even did anything more intense that what Grey wants to do to Ana.

So why is Mrs. Robinson an evil witch who damaged Grey, whereas Grey is just ‘moody’ and sexy and wants only the best for Ana?

More email banter.  More Mrs. Robinson hate.  God this book is so boring it’s reusing its own boredom.  We spend two whole pages on Robinson this time.

The next day, Ana and her mom go shopping, then stop off in a bar.  Ana’s mother continues to spout off generalizing bullshit about men.

Robinson hate, version 3.0.  Seems Grey went to go have dinner with her the night before.  Ana seethes, and I’m dangerously close to wanting to side with a child rapist.  The hatred is just getting a little hard to take.

When Ana snarks at Grey over email for seeing Robinson again, Grey says he doesn’t want to talk about it, and then asks how many cosmos she’s going to drink.  Apparently he stalked her all the way to Georgia, to the exact bar that she’s in, after Ana expressly told him that she needs some distance.

Why the fuck is this man being glorified, again?