Re: Recovery Center: Travis & Marta
Growing up in a shitty little Podunk town, Travis was used to everybody knowing his business. Not just his, but everybodys. He wouldn't have been surprised if the local librarian could give the juicy gossip about the ins and outs of the town's wrong-side-of-the-tracks prostitution, really. Growing up, at the schools here, he'd seen the worst of it. Even the other kids had known whose parents were drunks and whose were cheating. Travis himself had gotten made fun of for a lot of his mom's own bad decisions until he'd gotten tall enough, sporty enough, and popular enough to stop going home altogether.
But Marta wasn't from here, and maybe it was fucked up or self-preserving, but he liked that about her. She didn't have to know all of his terrible or upsetting past stuff, just like he didn't have to know about all of hers. Sure, they'd shared a little at the meetings they both happened to be at, but that wasn't the same. It wasn't even that Travis wanted to keep it a secret or totally unknown, the stuff about his family or his past, but he thought that nobody really wanted to talk about that stuff, did they? Nobody wanted to know about all of the fucked up things that happened to your mom, or you... not really. He liked the idea of starting fresh with somebody, like with Marta. It was selfish, but he wasn't sorry for it. Not at all.
Which is why when Marta asked for something specific, something true, what he was doing for his stepfather for work... yeah, Travis stalled. He was not a natural born deceiver, and knowing this, he shrugged a little while trying to stick sort of close to the truth. "Stuff for his motorcycle club, basically. I've still got my full-time gig at the junkyard, though." When she slid her toes beneath his leg, his hand fell to the dip of one of her socked ankles, settling there between her and the edge of his own jeans.
"No rush," he assured of the grand tour. Then he tilted his head, curious. "Is that the kind of stuff you usually read? What is it about, princesses and stuff?" He was only half-teasing.