Pawnshops and Carousels
AvalonReeseFanFics
A/N: Hello my wonderful readers! Here we are, the 13th chapter and we've got another cute little flashback! We're going to have a little bit of drama starting in the next few chapters and then things are gonna get HELLA cute! So there's a lot to look forward to. Don't forget to leave a review and I'll see you guys next week!
Chapter 13
Les: We, the family, didn't meet Sabrina until Seth was way past head-over-heels for her. He kept her a secret from us, was too embarrassed to bring her around the house. We knew that something was up, of course, he had been acting strange We all thought that he had joined a gang or started doing drugs. He was out all hours, he was on secretive hour-long phone calls, he'd never tells us who he was talking to or where he was going. I'd ask if he was seeing a girl and he'd say sure but he'd never really answer. So, you could imagine my surprise when all of a sudden this girl walks into the shop asking for Seth. The look on his face… you would have thought the world ended right then and there.
"Hi."
"Hey babe…" he says softly and then goes back to the display case he's shining up. Then his head whips up in surprise. "REENIE!" Seth suddenly yelps. "Fuck. Babe you startled me… where… why are you… we're not supposed to meet for another hour…"
I had been watching this girl since she came into the store. I couldn't help it, because she looks nothing like our usual clientele. She also surveyed the whole store before making a bee-line to my son. I assumed that this must have been a classmate, or maybe a girl who was trying to impress him. She was a little too dressed up for the area she was in.
But finding out that my son did know her was a little surprising, because he had never mentioned a girl before. Though he seems surprised by her appearance,
"I know, but I was just so excited for tonight that well… I didn't want to wait. Besides I got a new dress, what do you think?"
She did a little twirl and a series of strange emotions cross over my son's face. It was a cute little floral summer dress, with puffy short sleeves and a hem that fell just below her knee. My son seems to appreciate it for all of two seconds before he notices me hovering and then his face goes an ashen white.
"Reenie, I told you not to come here," he hisses leaning over the counter. "I said I'd pick you up after work."
"Didn't you want to see me though…. Don't you like the dress?"
Seth looks at a loss and I feel for him so I come over immediately. "Hello there, young lady, did you bring something to pawn?"
She turns a bright smile to me and Seth looks horrified. "No. I'm Sabrina, I'm Seth's…"
"Dad I think someone needs help over there," he says interrupting the poor girl and pointing in a direction far away from them.
"Seth what's the matter?" the girl asks and I just stare at him because I want to know what's wrong too.
"Okay I just need him to… you know… go… and then me and you we'll talk this out…"
"Oh, is this one of the girls you've been seeing?" I ask. That sounded like my boy, stringing multiple girls along, this one must have gotten a little bit to attached.
Surprise is now on the girl's face. She turns to Seth who is wide eyed with horror and staring back her. As hurt colors her features he turns an outraged glare on me and growls out my name in warning but I only shrug.
"Girls?" she echoes.
"Oh sure, Seth's out with a new girl every other day."
"Every other day," she echoes turning her eyes to him. Seth shakes his head.
"No. Wait. Reenie… wait…" he starts but she backs away.
"Oh… uhm… I'm sorry…. I should… I mean I just remembered…"
"No, no Reenie, Sabrina," he's repeating, rushing down the counters to an exit point. "Wait, it's not what you think! He doesn't know! I haven't told him. Wait!"
But the girl has already made her way to the door. Seth practically sprints across the store to get to her. I follow after him watching out the door as he catches up to her in the parking lot, having to grab her by the shoulders and then crush her to his chest to keep her from leaving.
Now that was interesting. Here I was thinking that Seth didn't have a girl that he was settled on, but clearly that was wrong. And I uh… I might have fucked things up by telling her about his other girls.
I approach them silently in time to hear: "Then why does he think you're seeing other girls? Huh? You say you're always with me, you're only seeing me, then why does you dad think there's other girls, riddle me that?"
"Because I never told him about you, okay!"
"Oh and that's supposed to be better?" she cries.
"I just… I didn't… I don't…"
"Just let go of me Seth, I'm going home…"
"No, Reenie, it's a bad area, please. I know you're mad but just wait for me and I'll take you home and we can argue then! Please, I don't want anything to happen to you. I mean look at you, god, how did you get here in that without getting a million cat calls?"
"Don't you compliment me when I'm mad at you!" she snaps, pointing a finger into Seth's face. "You think I'm going to go back in there with your dad thinking I'm one of your floozies?"
"Okay, Seth, why don't you explain what's going on?" I ask him and he jumps like he hadn't expected me to be there.
"God Dad, not now!" he cries obviously past flustered.
"No. Go on, Seth. Tell him who I am," she orders.
"Sabrina… please…" "No, you say you care, you say I'm the only one, you go a head and tell him." "Sabrina." "Fine then I'm leaving."
She turns to storm away and Seth, in a blind panic, quickly grabs her arm. "No. No. No you're not," he snapped. "Fine, fine. Okay. Just… Dad, this is my girlfriend, Sabrina. She goes to my school, she's a year younger than me. I've been dating her for six months, it's our half-year anniversary tonight, which is nothing to you but it's something to us."
Okay. Now that I was not expecting. Dating sure. But fully fledged girlfriend? How had we not known that? However, this did explain all the late night calls, all the days he was late coming home from school and why he had agreed to work in the pawn shop part time when he had told me he didn't want to be a part of the pawn life. But why hadn't he told us about her? Was there something wrong with the girl? She looked normal, she looked sweet, so what's wrong with her?
"Why am I hearing about this now?" I ask. "It's nice to meet you, by the way. I'm just a little surprised."
"Me too," she admits offering me a hand to shake. Oh what a nice grip. She then turns back to Seth, who is holding her hand other hand tightly, his eyes softly caressing her face with an absent smile. "So why didn't you tell your parents about me?"
Well that got his attention again and he immediately lowers his eyes away from her and scowls. "Because I'm embarrassed," he growls.
She frowns again and whispers: "Of me?"
"No, of them!" he cries turning away from me just as I cry out an insulted oi! "Sabrina, they're insane, okay? If I told them about you, they'd want to meet you and they'd try to embarrass me and Ashley's a fucking bitch and I want you to like me, and to keep on liking me. I like that you think I'm cool and if you met them, you'll know I'm not and I never said there were other girls. My dad… he just assumed and I never corrected him so he'd stop asking me questions about where I was going. So no, no there aren't other girls, you are the only girl I'm seeing, the only girl I want to see, and I didn't tell them about you because I didn't want them to want to meet you. Okay?"
She stares at him for a moment and then puts her hands on her hips. "That is the craziest fucking thing you've ever said to me," she says and Seth groans.
"Okay, yeah, fine, I'm crazy. That's fine. Just please… please don't break up with me."
My Seth was a proud boy, just like me. To hear him beg her to stay… that was the nail in the coffin. That was how I knew that this wasn't just a high school fling. Seth was serious about this girl, very, very serious clearly.
"I'm not going to break up with you," she whispers and Seth visibly relaxed.
"Oh, okay good. Can you come inside then? You can sit in the back until I'm good to go," he says pulling her away from me.
I let them leave early to go to their anniversary dinner and then as soon as they were gone, I called my wife. She was just ecstatic to hear about this supposed girlfriend and when Seth came home, not only was he ready to tell us all about her but he also agreed to bring her over for dinner sometime in the following week.
Les: After that it was common for Sabrina to be either at our house or at the Pawn Shop. She loved to help out, she loved to spend time with us, but most of all she loved Seth. Things might have been rocky between her and Lilli originally but once Lilli realized just how much Seth liked that girl, just how much Sabrina liked him back, Lilli got over the whole no one's good enough for my baby thing quickly.
When they broke up all those years later, we were devastated. Seth was going to marry that girl, she was supposed to be our daughter-in-law, and it had sort of felt like she already was. But we didn't have time to grieve her, not when Seth was a wreck over the break up. So, when Ashley banged into my office to hurriedly tell me that Seth and Sabrina were back together, the first phone call I made was to Lilli to share the good news.
Here's hoping Seth doesn't do something stupid again. Maybe now that he's working with me, I can watch him a bit better… no way I'm going to let him fuck this up a second time.
