I was going to title this post “Eva Gets Fingered At A Concert”, but decided that was a little too raunchy to put as a title. Then went ahead and put the word “blow job” in there.
Chapter 9
The chapter begins with Eva, who told us how she doesn’t care about money a billion times, describing her friend’s attractiveness in terms of monetary value:
“Hey, you,” I greeted him, admiring how he managed to make worn jeans and a V-neck T-shirt look expensive.
Eva has lunch with Cary, where she says she’s going to a concert with Gideon. This prompts a conversation about Eva’s rock star ex-fuckbuddy, because why not.
“Brett was hot. Ever think about him?”
“With shame.” [...]
“He was a decent guy,” Cary said, before slurping up a hefty swallow of margarita-flavored slush.
“I’m not saying he wasn’t. He just wasn’t good for me.”
Here is Eva describing this same “decent guy” previously in chapter five:
[Eva's dad] especially had trouble with a lead singer for whom I’d been little more than a groupie and a tattoo artist whom my dad had pulled over to find him getting a blowjob while driving – and not from me.
Sounds like a nice dude.
Eva and minor character Shawna are picked up by Gideon, who takes them to dinner. En route, the novel’s most important plot development occurs:
Turning my head, I leaned my cheek against his. “My period’s over.”
Just so we can put this into perspective, we’re on page 147. Eva first got her period on page 52, during chapter three. Eva’s period has been a goddamn plot point in this novel for six chapters.
They arrive at a fancy restaurant and meet up with the owner, who is Gideon’s friend, Arnoldo, that he invited to the concert with them. Arnoldo and Gideon greet each other with “the backslapping ritual of close male friends”, and then Arnoldo greets Eva with a kiss on the mouth, because of course Gideon’s friends are as douchey as he is. After dinner, they go to the concert, where Eva and Gideon grind with each other during the opening act and everybody around them “whistled and catcalled things that ranged from ‘Get a room’ to ‘Fuck her, man!’”, because apparently the opening band just sucked.
The crowd continues to be like every other character in this book – 100% fixated on sex – because the headliner, the Six-Ninths, begin to take the stage and people around them hold up signs like “BANG ME, BRETT!”. Wait a second… Brett? Isn’t that…
I turned to face the stage, feeling a mad fluttering in my belly. Sure enough, it was Brett Kline at the mic, his deep, powerful, sexy-as-hell voice pouring over the thousands who’d come to see in action.
God, it’s like that scene from When Harry Met Sally where Harry says, “In a city of 8,000,000 you are bound to run into your ex-wife sometime.” Except instead of an ex-wife, it’s an ex-fuckbuddy rock star from the other side of the country, because that’s just how Reflected In You rolls.
I wanted a gif of that scene from When Harry Met Sally, but of course, this is the internet, so there’s only this one.
Anyway, this is about the point where Gideon starts fingering Eva in the middle of a concert. Also, apparently Eva’s vagina is voice-activated.
He gripped my bare though and squeezed. “Open.”
But it gets BETTER. It gets to the part of the concert where the cock rock band does its serious song, which you can tell from the lead singer removing his shirt and sitting on a bar stool not like a douche. And, of course, the song is about Eva. But here’s where it gets good: Sylvia Day wrote lyrics. All of them. I cannot fucking wait to see Sylvia Day try to write a song.
Golden girl, there you are.
I’m singing for the crowd, the music’s loud.
I’m living my dream, riding the high,
But I see you there, sunlight in your hair,
And I’m ready to go, desperate to fly.
Oh, my god, it’s like on Parks and Rec, where the dumb musician character includes the lyric “Spread your wings and learn to fly,” in every song he writes, except that was a joke and this is for serious.
Except Sylvia Day is actually trying.
In the second verse, it continues to sound like the most generic rock song ever written, except by someone who is very obviously not used to writing in meter. Or things that rhyme.
Golden girl, there you are.
Dancing for the crowd, the music’s loud.
I want you so bad. I can’t look away.
Later, you’ll drop to your knees. You’ll beg me please.
And then you’ll go, it’s only your body I know.
“Later, you’ll drop to your knees”? It’s a song, Sylvia Day! We don’t need exposition that doesn’t fit in the meter! How the hell is this non-rhyming, non-rhythmic song supposed to be sung?
You know what? LET’S FIND OUT.
The things I do for you guys.
Golden girl, where’d you go?
Getting fingered during your song about her lol
[Gideon's] palm pressed into my clit and massaged, and I climaxed in a rush that took me by storm. Tears came to my eyes. I cried out, shaking in his arms. Gripping the railing in front of me, I held on and let the unstoppable pleasure pulse through me.
No, really, nobody noticed this?
It shouldn’t matter that Brett wrote a song about me that painted a different light on our fuck-buddy history. I was in love with somebody else.
Just so we’re clear, his deep emotional song about the girl who got away was primarily about him getting a blow job.
Gideon gets everyone backstage passes, and Eva doesn’t want to stop her friends from meeting a band they really like, which is pretty selfless of her, albeit really dumb. Thankfully, she changes her mind and decides to wait in the limo, but Gideon (surprise!) is being a dick about letting her out of his sight.
He gave me a very patient look. “Eva, I’m not leaving you alone.” [...]
I threw up my hands. “Okay. Fine. Have it your way.”
“You’re learning, angel,” he said with a smile.
Eva sneaks off and because this book just despises women, IT IS TOO DANGEROUS FOR WOMEN OUT THERE, GIDEON WAS RIGHT.
A burst of flame in the darkness to my right startled me. I jolted to a half and watched Brett Kline lift a match to the clove cigarette hanging from his lips. [...] He glanced up, caught me in his gaze, and froze. [...]
“I can’t…” I swallowed. “There’s nothing to say.”
“Bullshit.” The intensity of his glare burned through me. “You stopped coming around. Didn’t say a word, just stopped showing up. Why?”
Apparently I needed to write this twice in this post: the deep love song about the girl who got away had an entire verse about getting a blow job.
“You owe me an explanation,” he bit out.
“It’s not-”
He kissed me.
Well, dude, she can’t talk if you’re kissing her. You’re dumb!
By the time I registered what was happening, he’d tightened his grip on my arms and I couldn’t move away. Couldn’t push him away.
And for a brief span of time I didn’t want to.
I even kissed him back, because the attraction was still there [...]
But in the end, it didn’t matter that he got to me still [...] because I was madly in love with Gideon Cross
I love this. Eva spends like five pages talking about how, yeah, she’s still attracted to Brett, but it doesn’t matter because she’s in love with Gideon. Both before, during, and after she returns Brett’s kiss. And yeah, it’s totally going to matter when your boyfriend that you love so much sees you cheating on him regardless of how much you love him or not.
So can you tell that I watched Pretty In Pink recently?
The chapter ends with Gideon showing up, charging, and tackling Brett. So on the plus side, this might mean they’ll be too busy fighting to have sex even though Eva’s off her period, so I can go another chapter without having to read a sex scene! Huzzah! Except… this is Reflected In You, and Eva and Gideon solve all their problems with sex, so…
Shit.
