First date

Chapter Thirteen: Confessions.


While Meyers had a great cliffhanger last chapter. She utterly failed in resolving it. Instead of seeing Bella's impressions of what Edward looks like when he first steps out, we skip ahead to later.

Edward in the sunlight was shocking. I couldn't get used to it, though
I'd been staring at him all afternoon. His skin, white despite the faint
flush from yesterday's hunting trip, literally sparkled, like thousands
of tiny diamonds were embedded in the surface. He lay perfectly still in
the grass, his shirt open over his sculpted, incandescent chest, his
scintillating arms bare. His glistening, pale lavender lids were shut,
though of course he didn't sleep. A perfect statue, carved in some
unknown stone, smooth like marble, glittering like crystal.

"Couldn't get used to it" indicates that she's been looking at him for a bit now. We don't get to see her first impression of what he looks like. What happens when he steps out into the sunlight? How does this make her feel to see how very inhuman he is? We don't even see how she feels in this description. It's a very weird and disjointed image and lavender lips reminds me of C*l*br*n not a happy image. And lavender isn't very attractive in the first place, reminding me of hypothermia. He looks like something that should go in a museum. Not at all desirable. He reads as distant and cold. Hard - and not in a good way. At least, not comforting.

She waxes on about how sparkly Edward is. For several paragraphs.

Hesitantly, always afraid, even now, that he would disappear like a
mirage, too beautiful to be real… hesitantly, I reached out one finger
and stroked the back of his shimmering hand, where it lay within my
reach. I marveled again at the perfect texture, satin smooth, cool as
stone. When I looked up again, his eyes were open, watching me.
Butterscotch today, lighter, warmer after hunting. His quick smile turned
up the corners of his flawless lips.

I inched closer, stretched out my whole hand now to trace the contours of
his forearm with my fingertips. I saw that my fingers trembled, and knew
it wouldn't escape his notice.

I lightly trailed my hand over the perfect muscles of his arm, followed
the faint pattern of bluish veins inside the crease at his elbow. With my
other hand, I reached to turn his hand over. Realizing what I wished, he
flipped his palm up in one of those blindingly fast, disconcerting
movements of his. It startled me; my fingers froze on his arm for a brief
second.

And then they make out and have hawt sexors.

Well, no not really. But the intensity of emotion that they put in to just touching each other is like the intensity you put in during a prelude to sex between two people who are about to do it for the first time with each other.

It ends with the weirdest description of someone about to kiss that I've ever seen:

But I couldn't answer. As I had just that once before, I smelled his cool breath in my face. Sweet, delicious, the scent made my mouth water. It was unlike anything else. Instinctively, unthinkingly, I leaned closer, inhaling.

Um... Edward smells tasty? I think? You shouldn't use food metaphors when describing sexual moments. Even a kiss counts as a sexual moment. Not that it goes anywhere. Edward flees.

The amount of time Edward spends running away from girls makes me start to wonder about his preferences. He kinda also acts like girls have cooties. If he doesn't want to be kissed or go that far, he shouldn't have to run away, but instead just tell her to stop.

Edward then shows off to Bella on how predator like he is, by running around and destroying wood. Bella says that she is frightened. "I sat without moving, more frightened of him than I had ever been." But we don't get any physical description of how she feels frightened. Beyond her face being ashen.

THEN Edward tells her not to be afraid, that he's not going to hurt her after twelve previous chapters of telling her that he's dangerous and could hurt her. *Headdesk* Nice contradictory messages here, yah?

When asked why she's afraid of him. She says she's afraid of wanting to be around him to much. Buh? To make things even more confusing Edward goes back to saying she should be afraid of being around him to much.

I'm getting whiplash.

He continues do whiplash more by saying he should leave because she wants to be near him but he won't because he doesn't want to and she should remember to be scared of him because he could eat her, even if he won't.

Do you get that? I don't.

Edward continues by saying that Bella's smell is like a heroin junkie's kind of heroin, Edward being the junkie. He talks about how it took everything he had not not jump her and eat her right then when he first met her. It's very sexual how he describes her smell and what it does to him. Denying his thirst is denying his sexuality. He tells her how he wanted to get her alone with him so that he could have his way with her. How he wanted to kill the entire class so that he could have her.

This doesn't bother her at all. It intrigues her. She's relieved to finally know why he acted the way he did, even if common sense told her that she should be terrified. She really doesn't listen to that voice.

I'd like to point out that we're about half way through the book and once again nothing has happened.

Edward admits that Bella is the most important thing to him ever. Not that he loves her though. That she's a thing that he finds important. Not the most important person. But a thing. But then he does admit that he loves her. Which I think is silly, mostly because they've barely gotten to know each other. I doubt Bella even knows what sort of books Edward likes to read. Or really anything about him beyond he's shiny and pretty.

There's an infodump about why Edward ran away from Bella and went to Alaska. He couldn't bear the scent of her so he ran away and then came back because he felt like he could bear the scent of her. MmmHmmm...

They do touching that's exceptionally sexual, but not. They do this a lot. It's kinda annoying. It's supposed to be sexual tension, but I just want to get it over with so that there can be plot. Or at least movement towards something. The constant talk of danger and snuggling is boring. Especially since we've been doing it for ten pages now. Okay, maybe not ten pages, but it feels like it.

FINALLY they leave the meadow. Edward takes Bella back to the truck on his back. Carrying her like a child. This happens to Bella a lot, as previously notes. It takes them two paragraphs to get back to the truck with absolutely no description.

There's more talk and pseudo cuddling as Edward tries to get Bella to stop being motion sick. And finally they kiss.

Blood boiled under my skin, burned in my lips. My breath came in a wild gasp. My fingers knotted in his hair, clutching him to me. My lips parted as I breathed in his heady scent.

Um. Yeeeaaaaaah. Hokay. I'm seeing her blood breaking through her lips and making a big mess. Not a pretty picture. I'm sure Meyers was trying for hot blooded, but it just didn't work. Edward manages not to eat her and he's rather happy about it. He has stronger will power than he thought.

As they're about to leave (finally) he demands that he should be the one who drives because she's obviously not capable. At this point since Bella is very wobbly and motion sick, it's sort of a reasonable excuse. Still they drive off and I suppose in a way begin their relationship as a "couple".