A Literate Adult's Return to the Valley of Twilight, Part Six: B&E’s and invasion of privacy do not equal sexy romance, Bella.

Read Part One here, Part Two here, and Part Three here, and Part Four here, and Part Five here.

Bella genuinely made me chuckle on page 301. Edward had just been sniffing her neck a whole lot. I can't say neck-sniffing came up much on my own adolescent make-out adventures. I guess Stephenie Meyer had to get creative with her sexual tension-y scenes since her characters couldn’t do anything remotely sexual with those raging hormones because Mormonism.

During the erotic neck-sniffing, Bella and Edward have this conversation:

“I thought you were desensitized.”

“Just because I’m resisting the wine doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the bouquet,” he whispered. “You have a very floral smell, like lavender … or freesia,” he noted. “It’s mouthwatering.”

“Yeah, it’s an off day when I don’t get somebody telling me how edible I smell.”

I found this to be a legitimately funny reaction to Edward’s weird behavior. Like, if this were the only thing I ever read about Bella, I could entertain the idea that she is a clever, worthwhile character deserving of having four long-assed books written about her.

Unfortunately that didn’t make me forget how Bella had been acting just forty pages earlier:

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.

Well, goddamn it, Bella. You seem to want to eat Edward’s face off just as much as he wants to eat yours! If I hadn’t already read this series, I would wonder if this was one of those unreliable narrator things, and it would turn out that Bella was a zombie the whole time. Don’t you hate it when you imagine something way cooler than the book you’re reading turns out to be? Oh, Zombie Bella. The adventures you could have had. You could’ve eaten the faces of all those humans at school that you hate and ignore (even though they’ve been nothing but nice to you).

On Page 292, Edward and Bella get back to her house after their hike and he opens the door for her. Bella asks if the door was unlocked and Edward’s like, “No, I used the hidden key that I know about because I’ve been stalking you for weeks now and breaking into your house to watch you sleep." 

Bella has a reaction to Edward’s creepsterhood that no number of amusing jokes could make up for:

“You spied on me?” But somehow I couldn’t infuse my voice with the proper outrage. I was flattered.

You were flattered? You were flattered this guy has been sneaking into your house and watching you sleep?

I know you haven’t dated much before, Bella, but that’s just not how we do things. Generally a dude respects that your house isn’t, you know, his house, and waits for you to invite him over. That is also usually a rule with vampires too but like half of vampire myth is (conveniently) exactly that in Meyer’s version of vampire events.

Bella, a dude was sitting like two feet from you while you slept every night for weeks and you didn’t know about it. He listened to super secret stuff you said in your sleep! And, by the way, have you forgotten that he had to fight the urge to murder you that whole time?

Bella gets upset when Edward mentions that Bella talks in her sleep, and I hoped she would finally react like a normal person to this stalkery:

“No!” I gasped, heat flooding my face all the way to my hairline. I gripped the kitchen counter for support. …

His expression shifted instantly to chagrin. “Are you very angry with me?”

“That depends!”…

“On?” he urged.

“What you heard!” I wailed.

I had such a strong response to this that I couldn’t help yelling at Bella in the margins:

Next time we’ll be discussing vampire baseball. I hear from Eternal Sparkle Hunk himself that vampires fucking love baseball because it is “the American pastime.” 

Thanks, Edward. I totally get the link between bloodsucking and a fondness for hitting balls with bats during thunderstorms now. Good talk.

Read Part Seven here.