log: marta & travis ; its a date pt 1 Who: Travis and Marta. What: A date. Some football. Some make outs. Where: Around town, the highschool, the woods, etc. When: Don't even ask. It transcends time. We can say 'awhile ago'. Warnings: Make-outs and possible, but out-of-frame, mention of drugs.
But see, he wasn't nervous. He'd known Marta for long enough now, even though in the beginning it had been only in passing, that he felt comfortable with the idea of hanging out with her, just the two of them. They'd always had fun, never had drama, not between them anyway. Also, to be honest, Travis was self-medicating enough these days that he really didn't get nervous at all anymore, not unless the cops were involved. Being on a bottom rung of his stepfather's drug dealing ladder, Travis actively avoided the police. And as far as the whole drug dealing thing went, it wasn't that Travis was getting paid exceptionally well. Honestly, he wasn't getting paid much at all anymore. His stepfather would just turn the other way when Travis kept a few extra pills for himself. He wasn't interested in meth, which was mostly what his stepdad's gang pushed into Repose. He wasn't interested in dealing period, but it wasn't like he had a great deal of say in the decision. Twenty-five years old and he still felt like a little kid when pushed into a corner.
But tonight wasn't about any of that. Tonight was about something a little closer to normal. For Travis, there was nothing more normal than football. It brought back a lot of memories, and almost all of them were good. Even so, Travis hadn't been back to a game since getting back to Repose, and he was a little apprehensive about it all. Anxious, even. There was something about seeing it all now when the magic was gone, something like seeing the man behind the curtain, Travis didn't know how to feel about it. He'd had nothing but hope in those days, and now there was none of it left. He wasn't sad about it, if asked he could say that he didn't care at all, but still...
Travis drove through the main street of Repose in his old car, before turning a corner and shifting into neutral so that the engine could rumble at a corner stop sign while he texted Marta. He thought he should check first since she'd moved since the last time he'd picked her up somewhere. So he sent a quick message.
Do you want me to pick you up or meet you there?
To make up for Travis' lack of nervousness, Marta had enough of her own. Things had been weird for her lately - some things were settling into 'good' and 'stable', but there were still always the things that threatened to tip her over the edge back into a spiral. She was doing her best to avoid that though, and trying to focus on the things that made her as close to happy as she thought she might be able to get: joining a sort of three-person book club, spending her days at work, starting to spend her early mornings stretching along with episodes of YouTube yoga channels.
It was a desperate sort of clinging to 'normal', or at least trying to forge a 'normal' for herself. One that didn't involve the clink of mostly empty bottles, the smooth geometry of pills in her hand and down her throat, or the stink of strangers' sweat and spunk on her skin. It was strange for her, but she was slowly starting to find that she liked it. And the thought of a date (because this had to be a date, right?) fit itself easily among the rest of the good things. Though that made it all the more important (in her own mind) for her to get it right.
She'd been honest in what she'd told Travis: football games for her had always been a combination of going to cheer on Lip once he made a name for himself on the team, and hiding away under the bleachers, cigarettes and jizz on the back of her tongue and in the grooves of her fingertips as she did whatever the hell she wanted with whoever she wanted. And since agreeing to go to the game, she'd spared a few moments to wonder what it might have been like to go to the same school as Travis. If she would've watched him on the field with her brother and cheered for the both of them. Or if he would've been one of the guys to sneer at her in public but not mind so much when her hand or mouth was on his dick in private. Or if they wouldn't have even given each other a second glance.
It was a tiny tumble of confusion and musing in her own mind, but it didn't do much to help with the bit of nervousness about the real world, with a real meeting in the near future. So she distracted herself with picking an outfit to wear, and when the text came, her phone was in her hand almost before the notification was done pinging.
Pick me up? I'm upstairs from live and breathe.
Travis didn't know what Live and Breathe was, but there wasn't any reason that a drug-dealing ex-jock really should. He actually had to look it up, and then steered in that direction while wondering how he'd always driven by without paying the spot any attention. It really couldn't be that surprising, though. Travis pretty much stayed put in the junkyard unless some gang business drew him out, which was always to a bar or the motel. Bikers weren't exactly banging down the door of Live and Breathe, right? But Travis found it easily enough, and found a parking spot out front for his latest car project. The old Dodge was a model straight out the 70's, long and muscled. She used to be a pretty ocean blue back in her day, but now clearly boasted more rust than paint. Still, her purr was a testament to the fact that it was what was on the inside that counted. He killed the engine and waited a few moments, wondering if he should shoot Marta a text about his arrival. In the end, Travis decided to get out and walk up to the shopfront, at least. Because yeah, he too was thinking that this was something of a date.
Maybe Travis was out of practice, but he wasn't really dressed for a date. Then again, a highschool football game probably didn't count as a proper date in anybody's book. That made it a little safe, right? Like treading water en route to something deeper and more serious. He'd asked her, and he was picking her up at her door, but it was still only a highschool football game. He had on his old Repose letterman jacket, like a complete nerd, but the colors weren't flashy. They went well with his gray sweater and bluejeans. There wasn't a lot to his 'almost date night look' as opposed to his regular look. Except there was definitely some gel in his hair, and the sage-like smell of some cheap guy's body spray.
He paced a little, then he shot her another text, Out front. Your chariot awaits.
To be entirely honest, Marta didn't have many 'proper' dates under her belt. Where 'not many' meant just about none at all. In highschool, she'd always been the one to hang out at parties, at the edges of groups. She always managed an invitation, but never as someone's actual date. Her life had been filled with casual hookups and red solo cups for a while, and then she'd dropped out and moved away, missing her entire senior year and some of her junior. Maybe things would've been different if she'd stayed, but it was well in the past, and leaving her without a real picture of what this night would be.
But she clung to the thought that Travis liked her, at least. This wasn't (as far as she was aware) going to be a group of people piled into a car on the way there, with no real plan of how any of them would get home after the game. No, it was going to be just the two of them and a football game. And possibly - probably, if some of their previous conversations held true - Travis might kiss her. It seemed like a silly thing for her to be nervous about, in her own mind, knowing everything she'd done in the past. But this… this was different. Unknown territory, just like the rest of the evening.
By the time the next text came, she was in black leggings and an oversized sweater, a winter coat zipped over and long enough so that her ass wasn't going to freeze on metal bleachers. There were mittens tucked in the coat's pockets, just in case she got cold, but she kept them off for the moment - if for no other reason than it made it possible to text back:
Omw!
The door to upstairs was tucked off to the side, and she closed and locked it carefully once she came down, still extra aware of it not really being 'her space', no matter what Derek said. So a little extra care, and then her key zipped into her jacket's inside pocket before she turned toward the street, noting the car parked there and the fact that Travis was lingering on the sidewalk. Only a few steps away, which she crossed before looking up at him with a smile. "Hi…"
It hadn't been very long between Marta's Omw text and her arrival, but Travis had a tendency to think the worst when left to his own devices. It was a stupid thing obviously, but knowing that didn't shake the sudden sense of worry loose from him any. With both hands wedged down into his pockets, Travis stood on the curb near his car and cast a thoughtful look, complete with eyebrows knit tight, across the street. He probably should have brought some flowers, right? He'd never really done that sort of thing before, but almost all of his dating experience was relegated to school days. And, let's face it, he wasn't some dumb kid anymore skating by on jock popularity and rebellion.
Yeah, Travis definitely should've gotten some flowers. What kind of fucking idiot didn't bring flowers for their date? He worried over it for a moment longer before a sound from behind had him turning toward the building once more, finding Marta walking up to him. Immediately, as if by magic, the self-deprecating worry was rinsed from his mind. When she smiled, almost every clearheaded thought slipped away from Travis, leaving him just a little dumbfounded. He could remember taking an elbow to the solar plexus during Freshman football practice a literal lifetime ago, and in this moment, Travis felt just as debilitated. He smiled back, eventually finding a reply, "Hey." He considered telling her that she looked great, but Travis didn't want to seem weird about it.
So, instead he eased back toward his car, pulling open the passenger door, with some effort, for her. The door was heavy, good old American steel, and it groaned a little in the hinges when he pushed it wide so that she might crawl inside. The heat worked, and it was still toasty warm in the car despite the engine being off for a bit. He'd installed a new stereo in the dash, which made this ride way more technologically advanced than the last had been. Aside from the stereo, Travis hadn't done much to the inside of the car yet. The dash was old wood paneling and a little scratched up. The front seat was one long bench-style with faded burgundy velour as the upholstery. It smelled a little bit of stale cigarettes from whomever had owned it before, but that was forever ago. Now, the ashtray in the front dash was pulled out and open, sparkling clean like a little chrome tray, housing a handful of those little chocolate candies that she'd gotten him for Christmas.
Honestly, it was probably a good thing that Travis hadn't brought flowers. She wouldn't have known what to do with them if he had, and it would have made for some very awkward first moments. Not that they were very relaxed in actuality, but best to not complicate things too much, if possible. As it was, she ended up staring a little as she looked up at him, smiling but not knowing what to say for a moment. He looked good, though a few details maybe made her worry enough that she had to push those thoughts to the side and focus instead on the good things.
She didn't know how to read the look on his face or the way he smiled at her. It seemed appreciative? But in a soft sort of way. It wasn't a familiar expression, or a common one directed at her, but it didn't seem bad - not at all. Pleased, maybe, and good, and unfamiliar or not, she'd take that any day over something negative. "Hey," she repeated, even though she'd already greeted him, smile shifting into something awkward once she realized her repetition, though it was still a smile that lingered on her face.
Someone opening a door for her was less strange to her than flowers would have been, though it still wasn't an everyday occurance. It made her smile again, wider, as she eased herself into the car, and with a fleeting breath of courage (if it was even able to be called that), she let her hand sit light on his forearm for a moment as she folded down into the vehicle. It was gone again after just a few seconds, as she slid a little further in and smiled at the blanket of warmth that wrapped around her once inside. It only took a few seconds to inspect the entire front seat, and she laughed, a little rough but with actual amusement, when she saw the Hershey's kisses piled in the open ashtray.
"You were supposed to eat those."
After jogging around the front of the car, and in a matter of must have been only two heartbeats worth of time, Travis had the driver's side door open and was settling into the warmth alongside her. It was nothing supernatural or anything, but he was quick-footed. Ex-quarterback, maybe that didn't come as anything of a surprise, but most of that quickness had definitely been honed years before he'd ever set foot on a field. He wasn't bulky at all, so the only way he'd ever made it out of a scrimmage(or his household) alive, was to be fast.
When she commented on the candy, Travis grinned incredulously... and it was a good grin, one that echoed of the long, lost days when he'd been able to charm the world into believing he was worth the time. "You only gave me like a hundred pieces of candy, how fast should I eat it?" He really only had a sweet tooth when he was really sober, something about depriving his altered brain chemistry from pleasure for so long really made him crave sugar. So maybe it said something that he hadn't eaten his way through the bags of chocolate yet.
"Besides, I like keeping them around the car." To prove a point, Travis shifted into gear but idled with his knee steadying the steering wheel as he pulled a chocolate kiss from the ashtray. It was warm in the car, so the foil didn't exactly pull away cleanly from the candy. "Every time that I see 'em here, I can think about you." He ate the chocolate from his thumb then, dropping a tiny bit of wrapper out the window before the car steered away from the curb.
There wasn't enough time for her to feel abandoned by being in the car alone - barely seconds passing between her door closing and the driver's side opening. And maybe she watched a little too closely as he settled easily into the driver's seat.
"I can get you more, y'know. It's not like they're the last Kisses in the world." Her speech came easily and smoothly, because even though she was a little nervous about the night, she wasn't anxious or stressed by it. Plus, nothing had come up (yet?) to make her upset in any way - it all made for a relaxed atmosphere for her. ...though if she'd known about the circumstances of Travis' sugar cravings (or lack thereof), there may have been many more difficulties piling up in the car.
But there weren't, and it wasn't the warmth of the car that made her cheeks pink, though she may have blamed the heat if she was called on it. But what else was she supposed to do when he said things like that? "Yeah?" She was softer for a brief moment. "D'you… see them a lot?" God, she felt like an idiot - she was never this much of a loser when she was in school. The wrapper was a second's worth of reprieve though, and she leaned across the width of the bench seat to poke Travis in the side, hard enough to be felt through the thickness of his jacket. "Hey! Don't litter." It was a weird thing for her to call him on, but she was smiling when she said it. (Didn't mean she wasn't serious about it though.) "I have pockets. I can take the wrappers."
Yes, focus on the wrappers so that her mind wouldn't dwell on the sudden thought of him putting his hands in her pockets, or being close enough to do so. It wasn't exactly an expected thought, and she only got a little pinker as it meandered its way through her mind.
They didn't have far to go, so the drive wouldn't be a long one. This particular football game was set to be the last of the home-based ones for Repose, but even that didn't mean that Marta and him were going to be pressed for parking or time. Repose was small, and like all small towns, it moved slowly. Even the game was bound to start late in order to allow for some hush hush highschooler tailgating that nobody of authority ever seemed to talk about. It allowed for them to cruise, lazy. When she asked after the candy, Travis smiled a little, thinking her question was almost flirtation. "All the time," he told her, truly.
He playfully swerved the wheel(although there was no oncoming traffic at the moment), when she poked him in thinning ribs. "Alright, Captain Planet, jeez!" Righting the car in their lane again, Travis pulled the next Kiss from the ashtray and handed it to her. "Unwrap it for me? You can recycle the papers." If she was willing to pocket them anyway.
In the lull, Travis chewed the inside of his cheek. He wondered if he should have asked her out for dinner first, even though it was still kind of early. There was always dinner in the movies, even though Travis couldn't ever, like not even once, remember taking a date out for actual dinner until he'd met his wife… in another life. "Are you hungry or anything? I mean, they'll have chips and stuff at the game… but if not, we could go somewhere after, if you want."
To be honest, Marta wasn't particularly worried about the game. She'd agreed to it because it was what Travis had suggested, and because football games were a fairly good memory from her past. Even if she felt a few decades past that these days, it wasn't a particularly bad trip down memory lane. Especially when the evening had her feeling like she was in one of those stupid highschool movies, where kids were dorks about being around someone they liked. She'd never quite had that feeling before.
But fuck, it was like she was suddenly getting it all at once. The way Travis smiled, and the way his voice sounded, telling her that he thought about her all the time… Her teeth bit into her lower lip a bit and she shook her head. "Shut up," she managed to say, quiet as she turned just enough to glance out the side window and rubbed at her cheek a little, feeling how warm it was.
The sudden swerve caused her to help and reach out again, this time clenching her fingers in the thick material of his coat. It was only because she hadn't been expecting it, and once she realized that he was playing, she shoved at him and then balled up her fist to hit at his shoulder. It wasn't hard, barely much of anything (she wasn't actually trying to get them into an accident or to hurt him at all). "Just drive! Fuck, keep us on the road." She was a little breathless, but had slipped back into smiling at him.
She took the wrapped chocolate from him and began to unwrap it, hands thankfully steady for the moment. A bit of picking to start the edge of the foil, and then a tug of the thin paper to widen the silver enough for her to pull it away. A roll of her fingers balled the paper into the foil and she did tuck it into one of her pockets as she held the chocolate back out to him, it sitting on her flat, outstretched fingers.
And as for eating? "I'm fine." She'd had a snack after work, but was honestly a little too nervous to eat too much. And she still wasn't feeling very hungry. "Maybe after? I'll steal some Kisses if I have to." She didn't mean it to sound flirty when she said it, but then it was out there and she replayed it in her head. Stealing kisses… Instead of backpedaling, she just let herself smile a little.
Reckless driving could have definitely been Travis modus operandi. In another life, he would have been the guy playing chicken in one of those retro teen movies, or the one racing down a foggy mountain road at midnight with his eyes playfully closed. It was probably a good thing that he didn't have access to motorcycles or fast cars when he was younger. At his current wise, old age, Travis was a little more cautious, although that was mostly about avoiding the cops than looking out for his own safety. Still, with his playful swerve, he hadn't really expected to take Marta's breath away. He shrank away from her assault when she hit his arm, but he was laughing like he got a kick out of her reaction. "Okay, okay!"
Travis made a big show of his safe driving skills then, placing his hands in their proper degrees on the steering wheel. He kept his eyes straight ahead while she fiddled with unwrapping the candy beside him. Travis knew his way to the high school, his old stomping grounds, like the back of his hand, and he navigated the roads lazily until she held some of that candy out to him on the edge of her fingers. He kept his hands on the wheel, because safety first and all, and rather ducked his head to catch the offered chocolate in his teeth. He didn't get weird about it or drool on her or anything. Travis tucked the chocolate into his cheek, savoring the way it melted slowly rather than chewing the whole thing up.
When she said what she said about stealing kisses, the car idled at a stoplight and Travis looked at her straight on, catching sight of her slight smile. "You really don't have to steal them. They're all yours." He might've been talking about the chocolate.
"Jerk." Marta's voice was soft and fond, accompanied by a smile that she angled across the front seat toward Travis. In another life, she would've been the girl waiting on the side of the road, waiting for the cars to come to a stop before spending the night sitting on the the warm hood with a beer and someone's arm around her waist. Or plastered along someone's back as a motorcycle sped along empty streets. (That one… that one she had been, once upon a time. But that wasn't a thought for this particular evening.)
The super-safe driving made her laugh again, a little rusty and a little quiet, like it so often was these days. But at least the smile felt more familiar to her face than it had for months. Years. It felt right again - finally.
For some reason, she hadn't been expecting Travis to lean over and eat the chocolate right from her fingers. It could have been innocent - after all, he did it carefully and without making too much of a production of it. But it still made Marta stare and her heart skip just a little. And once the chocolate was gone from her fingers, they curled slightly, the slightest touch brushing Travis' chin as he sat back again.
"Well…" Her voice was a whisper now, but it also came out with just a little bit of extra warmth. "You did say that you were going to give me one next time we saw each other. If you still wanted to." For a second, she thought about sliding across the seat before the light changed to green - slipping close and just taking one for herself. Not the chocolate. But instead, she stayed where she was and pressed her lips together before giving another smile, her eyes shifting down to Travis' mouth for just a second and then back up as she looked at him.
It was familiar ground to flirt with her like this, and it was worth it to see the look on her face when he'd eaten the chocolate from her hand. He thought that she had the most beautiful, kind eyes. As the moments ticked by with them both in the front seat looking at one another, the chemistry was twisting his stomach into a knot. It was a good kind of anxiousness, something that he hadn't felt in so long that he'd forgotten a feeling like it existed at all. He tracked the subtle movement of her eyes, and Travis would have sworn that he could hear his own heartbeat going hard in his ears when her attention lingered on his mouth.
For the record, he did want to kiss her. Badly. The car had gone quiet, for what seemed to Travis to a few long moments. He wanted to pull her across the seat and into his lap. The visual was vivid with imagination, and it came as a shock when the driver in the car behind them laid on the horn. Travis blinked back to the road before them, finding the light long green. Laughing to himself, he moved on ahead before pulling into the small lot attached to the high school.
Once they'd parked, Travis killed the engine and pocketed the keys. He rubbed his hands together, preparing for the inevitable chill outside. "Ready?" Telltale high school band music could be heard performing from beyond the fence that led to the modest field's bleachers.
As they sat at the light, Marta wouldn't have complained at all if Travis would've put the car into park and tugged her across the front seat. And into his lap. They weren't far from being on the same page, as she thought about crawling across the bench seat even without his help. But then the honking from behind them broke the moment, and she startled as she looked over her shoulder and through the back window to see the annoyed driver of an oversized SUV behind them. She looked back at Travis with a grin that she turned into a silly wince, layered with just a little guilt at holding up what little traffic there was.
It wasn't much farther to the high school, and she looked out across the parking lot while they were still in the car. She'd never had reason to come to the school before, and for the first time she wondered if it was strange to be attending a game when she didn't know anyone on the field and hadn't even attended when she was younger, like Travis at least had. In the next moment, she pushed that away and let herself sink into the feeling of the evening. It didn't hurt to have the band music drifting toward them, almost setting the mood. "Ready," she replied with a nod, not admitting that she still was a little nervous about everything.
But after only another second or two of hesitation, she opened the door and slipped out, closing it behind herself with a bit of a shove to get it to shut tightly, and then tucked her hands into her pockets, watching as other people headed toward the field in pairs and groups.
The weather was perfect for a night game, crisp and cold without managing to drop all of the way to bone chilling. With the sun preparing to set within the next hour, the sky was clear and cloudless, ready to show off its stars. The sights(team colors and pom poms) and smells(cheap popcorn and fresh-cut field grass) brought back only good memories for him. Games like these had always been an escape from his home life and a place where he could securely feel like he belonged. Even if those days were years behind him now, the nostalgia was warm. Travis was feeling really good when they walked toward the stands, and he wrapped an arm around Marta, wanting to extend the good vibes if he could.
Inside the modest stadium, and Travis bought a coke for them with two straws from the little concession stand. When he paid for it, his wallet was so stacked with cash, and nothing bigger than a 20, that it might have looked absurd... or suspicious. Travis slipped his wallet into his jacket pocket and handed the soda off to Marta while he found them a pair of seats up in the stands. People all around them had banners and colorful flags in a show of support that was almost ridiculous for a town as small as this. But football was always like that in the smallest towns, one of the very few things that people could get excited over. He kept his arm around her even when they sat, rubbing Marta's outside arm with his hand to keep her warm. "We've got a few minutes, but they should be starting soon."
When Marta had attended games in the past, she'd arrived as part of a loose group, or showed up on her own and joined the others that were there because being at a school football game was better than being at home. Even though there'd obviously been more places to go in New York than there were in a town like Repose, Lip had always given her a hard time if she didn't come to cheer for the team (and him) at least a little. It made the scents and sounds of the night familiar to her too, though the arm around her shoulders was a new addition.
It was a nice addition though, even with the slight challenge of matching her steps to Travis' much longer stride. She just tucked herself close beneath his arm and tugged him back with a little grin if he started walking too fast for her. She didn't really expect anything from the concession stand, but she took the cup from him with only a passing notice (forced quickly away from her attention) of the cash in his wallet. She didn't want to think about anything other than the night and their date, so she followed Travis up the bleachers and settled in close once they sat. Because the night was chilly. Not for any other reason, of course.
She watched the figures down on the field, seeing them run back to their separate sidelines, and she gave a little nod. She remembered this too, the lead-up, the timing of things, the scoreboards at either end of the field and the glowing numbers of score and clock. "I'm not really in any hurry," she said, glancing up at Travis with a smile. "And I might be frozen by halftime, but I'm still warm right now." She paired that with a slight nudge against his side, her thigh pressed against his from her hip to knee.
It was different being in the stands. Travis hadn't realized how different, how strange, it would feel. Like the story about that girl who'd crawled into a snake hole and tumbled all of the way down to a backwards world where time was tracked by white rabbits. Everything was familiar, but also very much not the same. The marching band was still playing the same songs they'd always played, and the cheerleaders still had the same, catchy chants of encouragement for the field. Travis had the strangest, almost dizzying feeling, like he was staring down at the distant past, his own past. Back when he'd been the cynosure of all eyes, when he'd been the golden boy, proverbial lightning in a bottle. There was an unfamiliar bitterness on the backlot of his tongue's blade, and Travis took a quick gulp of soda to wash it away.
Stirred by her voice, he tore himself away from the game with an uncut mix of gratitude and qualm. "You won't get cold," he did the best with promises that he couldn't keep. "Do you want to wear this?" Travis offered his prized possession, that jacket, with a gesture. He smiled at her, and the expression was raw with trying. He was trying hard with Marta, and potentially needed to be put out of his misery. Because the way that he looked at her just now, she was really the only halfway good thing in this living hell of his, and they weren't even together like that.
The offer of Travis' coat was almost gentlemanly, and it made Marta smile, unaware that guys actually did things like that outside of tv and movies. But if she'd thought more about it, she would've remembered girls she'd known before huddled into the oversized coats of whatever guys they'd been going with. It was different than just stealing a guy's shirt when slipping out the door in the morning, or claiming a pair of boxers to wander around in. It wasn't hidden and it wasn't thievery when it was offered willingly. She was almost tempted to agree to it, just to be able to huddle into it and let the warmth and scent of its owner wrap around her. But she wasn't all that cold yet, and she also didn't want Travis to have to go without a coat when the night was only slipping into its chill.
So she smiled and shook her head just a bit. "I'm good for now. Like this." She leaned into his side again with that reassurance, eyes warm as they looked up at him. If she'd known just how far she was being built up, she might have pulled away again - run all the way back to her borrowed room. But she didn't know how to translate the expression on his face, having never seen someone angle that particular gaze at her before. She was ignorant of everything that Travis was going through - they never really talked about much of their lives, and his less than hers - and had no idea that she was standing as an anchor to good things for him.
It was luck that had Repose's team making the first score of the game, the crowd around them standing and cheering and drawing her attention away from Travis' face for a moment as she smiled and looked down at the field, the excitement of the team and fans making her laugh a little and cheer along, expression open with temporary happiness.
They didn't know much of anything about each other at all. He could gather details about her past here and there, the little things that she'd said at the meetings they'd once met at, although she'd rarely shared at all. She really hadn't had to, it wasn't like the most well-adjusted people in the world were attending those meetings. Shit had gone awry for Marta at some point, she'd had problems, and she'd coped with it all in a way that had made for more problems in the end. Considering more than half of the people at those meetings were court-mandated, it was just a guess that it might have been legal problems. Not so long ago she'd been having trouble with places to stay, jobs to hold down, these things were all glaring signs of trouble in the rear view. So Travis could guess, estimate, and theorize... but they weren't close enough that he felt like it was his place to ask yet.
Besides, he had skeletons of his own hidden away. Ones that he wasn't ready to shuffle out of the closet, nowhere near ready. One of those vicious skeletons, although not the biggest by far, was that he was selling drugs now. He really didn't want to get out to Marta, and he'd ignored every buzzing text message of the phone in his back pocket because of this. It was all a situation that Travis thought he might be able to resolve before it ever got exposed.
When the home team scored, the small-town fans around them exploded into whooping cheers. Travis untied his attention from Marta, back to the game, and he stood up along with everybody else to holler with enthusiasm for the kids on the field.