“Only if you want it to,” Eddie said, some knowledge obviously behind the statement. His own medicine cabinet had once been full to almost bursting but now it only held a multivitamin and a single bottle of a much more gentle mood stabilizer that he found he actually felt pretty good on, once all of the other meds had worked their way out of his system. “Not that I would imagine you wouldn’t want that one to come back.” He’d not really gotten into illegal drugs, sticking mostly to manipulating the medical system the same way his mother had to get what he wanted from doctors and hospitals rather than a dealer on the street. But he had tried pot once, when he was in his twenties and one of his coworkers had brought it on a conference trip. If it had been easier to get in New York when he was there, he may have tried to get a script for that one too.
Eddie moved a little closer too, floating slowly toward her as she moved toward him. He didn’t have a whole lot of height on her, but stayed toward the deeper end of the pool anyway. “I hated it too. But I was really, really, good at it and my wife wouldn’t let me drive the limos anymore.” He hadn’t loved that job either, but he’d liked it a lot better than the office jobs, when he was being honest. “What sort of noise do you fill them with?” he asked, because he understood, and maybe wanted some ideas. His need for noise might have been a little different, but he certainly felt the same way most of the time and as much as he usually complained when it was happening if the hotel didn’t throw them around a little he probably would have already lost his mind a bit.
He let out a humorless chuckle, almost a huff, then sighed. “Her name was Myra. My mom liked her. But they were both… kind of horrible. Controlling, manipulative. And I was… I wasn’t really me, for a long time, so I let them, and then when mom died I let Myra. I never really said no to her when I was home so when I didn’t want to deal with her or let her take over I just found ways to not be around her.” He saw it all now, how bad it had been and how much it had sucked his life from him, but then it hadn’t even seemed that wrong. He figured nobody really liked their wife, it was just what being in a long term relationship was like. But he’d followed the script, go to school, get a good job, get married, make lots of money; they’d even tried for kids a few times. He’d done it all the way he was supposed to. Except it was all bullshit and he would have never done any of it if the clown hadn’t made him forget so much. “It was a very healthy relationship.” The sarcasm dripped from his voice even more than the water did from the ends of his hair.