Evangeline Blackwood and the Lost Letter - draco malfoy

fifty.

Evangeline's life had been moving too quickly lately.

It seemed that she was missing time. She could remember going places, talking to people, laughing. But in the moments that she dissociated, which were strangely abundant, she felt as if she had simply blinked and her entire day was suddenly over.

This is not to say that Evangeline was unhappy. She had gotten out of her shitty job, divorced her shitty husband, and was living in her dream apartment with her dream job. And, for the first time, she had friends that she actually liked and she laughed often.

But then, there was the hole. An absence in her life was something she felt often but would rarely admit to. She did not have the capacity to wonder what the hole was, exactly. It was just . . . there.

Today, the hole felt especially heavy. It was Saturday and Evan had woken up with a hangover from her house party the previous night. She often woke up hungover and, after drinking nine glasses of wine last night, her headache was bordering on fatal.

She did not have any plans for the day. She did not have to go to work and had no errands to run. She thought that she might meet up with her friends later but other than that, she was alone.

And, little did Evangeline know, she was truly alone. For the first time in nearly three months.

She felt this aloneness when she sat up in bed, reading a book with the sunlight pouring over the page. Something felt off. She was reading the words on the page without acknowledging what they had said, having to read the same paragraph three times and still absorbing none of it.

She was unable to focus, unable to relax. She was not able to do the things that normal people did on a relaxing Saturday because she always had an intense sense of dread, one that seemed to follow her constantly and had no source. She always felt, in her brief moments of aloneness, that she should be doing something productive, making things happen or working on something. But she knew, was so very certain, that there was no work left to be done.

When night fell, Evangeline was still reading the same paragraph of her book. She had spent literal hours staring at it, zoning out, daydreaming. Her mind seemed to skip past the entirety of her day. She hadn't eaten and hadn't done anything except stare at the page.

This was a shock. When she finally looked up, after an entire day spent spiraling through her daydreams that she could not remember, she could see the sun setting out of her window. Aside from being totally terrified in realizing that her day had passed in what seemed like a matter of minutes, Evan was seething. She felt as if she was not currently inside of her life but rather someone peering down, watching herself fly by like a movie. It didn't occur to her to wonder what had happened, nor why she had lost so much time, but she was pissed off about it.

So when she checked her phone and saw no texts from her friends and no plans for the night, she decided to make her own plans.

Soon she was sitting at the bar sipping a cosmo. She was wearing her cute little black dress with her hair sleek and shiny, her eyeliner drawn smokily on her eyes. She stirred her drink with the little stick, staring down into it as it swirled.

The music was loud, bumping in her ears, the laughter and chatter around her high pitched and annoying. But Evan's head felt like it was underwater. Her hearing was muffled as if she had cotton in her ears. Her vision was a little blurry, not assisted much by the flashing blue lights and the darkness of the club. She was listening to the music as if in the bathtub, her head underneath the hot water and her eyes foggy from the heat. She saw a shift out of the corner of her eye but did not look up.

"Whiskey, neat," said a voice. Evan was still swirling her drink, watching as it shimmered in the light, the light red color watered down by her melted ice. The music was getting louder, pummeling into her ears but blocked by something. She blinked and looked a little to the side, her brows furrowed. Then, as if she had risen up out of the water, the music was suddenly crisp and clear and she could see properly and the background noise was piercing, just like the grey eyes looking right at her.