Audrey considered his question for a moment, idly fussing with one of the straps that crisscrossed across her chest and thinking absolutely nothing about the movement. Her kneejerk answer was, of course, to be a smartass and tell him she mostly abated the boredom with sex, drugs, and rock and roll. But as fun as those three things were it wasn't really the honest response. "I pet other people's pets a lot," she said. "I make up weird recipes just to see how they'll turn out, I spend a lot of time with Jinn in the graveyard, and I've been doing a time-lapse of a flower that's trying to bloom in the greenhouse, but with a teeny tiny green-screen so I can insert it into something else, maybe." There was more, of course, but those were her favorite things right now. She wasn't sure if Eddie would be as interested in the fact that she'd reorganize every single film canister in the theater by release date and genre or that she sometimes partnered with Joey when he was dancing. Once in a while she just laid in bed all day and let herself be full-on dramatic because she could.
As the conversation shifted, though, she found herself not entirely surprised by Eddie's disdain for his wife. It happened. Her parents had been madly in love from start to finish but correct relationship dynamics still hadn't exactly been modeled well for her. And her own relationships had been, to put it mildly, not that great. It had actually been a fair bit better for her here, but despite that she was still processing some things. Going to Jason for relationship advice might not have been the best idea she'd ever had but it had put into perspective just how weird her concept of relationships actually was.
"Yeah, I've had a couple of those," she said. "I mean, I obviously didn't marry them but my ex-girlfriend was really controlling. Super jealous. Isolating, even. And then there was this guy who was just an absolute fucking bum and when you communicate to someone how much attention you need and they still only do the bare minimum, you're just not vibing on the same level. Like, I need someone who's going to get up at four in the morning when I have a nightmare and let me sleep in their bed because that's where I'm at right now." And not everyone was down for that, and that was totally okay. She didn't sweat it. Someone who saw the value in her would be there to do it instead. And someone who saw the value in Eddie wouldn't try to turn him into someone he wasn't just because they needed to exercise control over another human being in order to make themselves feel less shitty.
"My philosophy is," she said, "not so much that you have to kiss a lot of toads to find a prince, but that if you feel the need to chase something instead of drawing it in, then you're doing all the work and that's dumb. I have manifested the concept that I would like to be spoiled rotten and occasionally fucked until I can't remember my name, and I will not be settling for less. I highly advise this method because so far it's working out great."