Blink went to bed that night much wealthier than he was when he woke up, but nowhere near as happy. The one person he'd thought he'd pushed out of his life entirely was back, and yet again engaged to some rich, brainless fool.
Returning to New York was nothing like he thought it would be.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
Blink opened his eyes in the morning to a pounding in his head. As he gradually woke up more, he realized the pounding was not in his head but at the door.
"Just a minute," he called out gruffly, rolling out of bed and pulling on his pants. He was buttoning his shirt as he opened the door and was met by a sudden burst of white fur and brown hair.
"What are you doing here?" The ball of fur shouted at him as a hand hit him forcefully in the chest – for such a small hand, it sure packed a punch.
"I... what?" He caught his breath and grabbed the yelling, thrashing fur coat by the shoulders and looked into familiar, whiskey-colored eyes that burned not unlike the liquor.
"You left! You were gone! You left and you were a stupid boy with no money and I had a normal life and things were fine and what are you doing here?"
Blink dragged a hand through his hair and sighed, looking into the face he'd secretly longed to see for the past ten years. "Business," he said coldly.
"You don't have business, you're a newsboy!" Evelyn glared at him, shaking her head. "I spent ten years wanting you to come back, waiting for you to show up on my doorstep and tell me you were just kidding. But now you're here, and I want nothing more than for you to leave."
"Well, it's no stroll in the park for me to see you, neither, Evie."
"Don't call me that." Evelyn covered her face with her hands, sighing. "Where did you go, Blink?"
"Like you said, I left. I was gone." He looked around the room, cocking an eyebrow. "What do you want, Evelyn?"
"I want..." She bit her lower lip, looking down at the floor. "I don't know what I want."
"So nothing's new in your life, then." When Evelyn looked up at him, he felt his heart sink a little. "You, um... you wanna sit down or somethin'?"
Evelyn nodded and he moved his suitcase off of a chair. "Here." Evelyn sat, looking around the room.
"So, I... I suppose you're doing fairly well for yourself, then."
"Yeah, not too shabby, I guess." He shrugged. "So, um... what happened to being Evelyn Post?"
Evelyn looked at him, an eyebrow slightly raised. "William, strangely enough, was killed a few months after we got married. The police found him in an alley, badly beaten. They figure it was probably a robbery gone bad." She looked at him, almost through him. "I carried his name for a while before I met Michael, and then I gave up on it and went back to my maiden name, seeing as I hadn't been married that long, anyway."
"Why'd you change it?"
"It was time to let William go."
Blink smirked. "Or Michael was your grandfather's new pet and no one wants a widow." He shrugged, sitting down on the bed. "Sorry to hear about William, though."
"I'll bet you are." Evelyn gave him a cold stare. She sighed and shook her head. "At any rate, how long are you expecting to be here?"
"Oh, I don't know. What with setting up business and deciding if and when I want to go back to Texas, a couple more weeks, I guess."
Evelyn groaned. "Why do I feel like I'm being punished?"
Blink smirked at her. "You done anything lately worth punishing?"
Her eyes met his. "Have you?"
Blink felt chills as Evelyn stared him down. He tried to look anywhere but at her face, but he always ended up looking right back into her eyes. "Evie, I think it's time for you to go."
"Fine." Evie stood, smoothing her coat. She said goodbye as Blink let her out and as he closed the door, he stood, bewildered. He rubbed his hands over his face, feeling the day-old stubble on his chin, and made a mental note to shave after he crawled back into bed and slept for about two more days.
He unbuttoned his shirt and cast it back over the chair, stretching and getting ready to finish undressing so he could go back to sleep, when the door flung open again. Evie kicked the door shut, shedding her coat and practically tackling Blink to the bed. He made a small noise of surprise and started to protest, but as she continued to kiss him, he gave in and actually found himself wrapping his arms around her.
After a few minutes, Evie pulled away, panting as she laid on his chest. "We shouldn't be doing this."
Blink laid his head back on the mattress, trying to catch his breath. "No, we shouldn't. We shouldn't have been all the other times, either."
Evie actually laughed, burying her head into the crook of his neck. "Blink," she murmured, placing her hand on his bare chest and sighing. "You have no idea how much I missed you."
"Likewise," he said, closing his unpatched eye.
There was a silence for a few minutes before Evie lifted her head. "I don't hate you, Blink."
He sighed, opening his eye again and examining her face. "I don't hate you, either, Evie."
Their lips met again, and before either of them knew what was happening, their positions were reversed to one far more familiar, with Blink's pants undone and Evie's skirt high up on her hips. Blink pushed as he did when they were teenagers, and for those first few moments, it felt every bit the same, as if they were back on the rooftop of the Duane Street Lodging House.
It lasted much longer than it did ten years before, but they still soon found themselves back in the bed of the inn, breathless and feeling more than a little dirty. As Blink rolled to the side, Evie sighed and straightened herself out.
"Well... I really should get going this time," she said, getting up from the bed and retrieving her coat from the floor.
"Yeah, you probably should." Blink watched her, torn between feeling satisfied and feeling angry with himself. They said goodbye again and she was gone, leaving Blink alone in the bed to try and figure out what'd he'd just done.
He sighed and pulled the covers over his head, prepared for a long nap.
o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o
"Well, hello, Mister Erickson," Lilly said from the front desk as Blink walked down the stairs into the lobby.
"Afternoon, Lilly," he answered with a yawn.
"Did you have a nice visit with your lady friend this morning?" She cocked an eyebrow at him, her lips pursed.
"Sorry?"
"You know, we don't really allow that here. You didn't know, so I won't tell my father. Just don't let it happen again, Mister Erickson." She leaned forward on the desk, propping herself on her elbows. "But you may want to think about how thick the walls are here."
Blink stared at her, thrown off both by the fact that he was being scolded by a seventeen-year-old girl and by the fact that she had heard him and was blunt enough to confront him. It was entirely uncharacteristic of her, of women in general. "I... my apologies, Lilly."
Lilly just stared at him, silent for a few minutes, before she opened her mouth. "She didn't look like any streetwalker I've ever seen."
Blink's jaw dropped. "I... she... no, she's not a streetwalker," he stammered. "She's not... anything like that." He sighed, adjusting his hat nervously. "I'm going out. Um... I'll see you later, Lilly."
