Pawnshops and Carousels

AvalonReeseFanFics

A/N: Happy Sunday my wonderful readers! So we have a short but cute chapter. Some more drama from the episodes. I hope you guys enjoy it as much as I enjoyed writing this chapter. As usual don't forget to leave a review, or a follow or a fav and I'll see you guys next week!

Chapter 29


In less than a week I'll be leaving my precious daughter with her grandmother on a daily basis while I return to work as my husband's assistant and at my new position as the manager of the online section of the Pawnshop. Well co-manager with Seth.

I'm super excited to be promoted up to Manager, super excited to go back to work but I'm not that excited to being leaving my daughter. I can't help it, she's only six months old after all. I know it's early and I should wait at the very least another three months, but I can tell that Seth is stressing about money, even though he hasn't said anything to me about it, and in turn it's starting to stress me.

It's only going to be part time to begin with, 3 days max if I feel up to it, but I still feel bad.

So, I've been spending a lot of time with Sierra to make up for what I think she'll probably perceive as an abandonment.

I've taken her to the zoo, to the museum, to the art gallery, to the Brigg's family carousel to show her where her daddy and I had our first kiss and Daddy first fell in love with me. Today I was taking her to American Jewelry and Loan to show her where Daddy, Grandpa Les, Aunt Ashley and I worked.

Sierra was starting to look more and more like Seth as she grew. Her eyes never went green but stayed as blue as her father's. She had Seth thin brown hair growing like a weed on top of her head. She even had his big goofy ears, and while right now they were cute I really hoped she grew into them so she wasn't teased at school. Seth might have been able to brush it off but I knew how cruel little girls could be.

We walked into the pawnshop and already I can see Seth. He's with a customer but his eyes are on us. I wave then take Sierra's little hand and make her wave. There's a squeal and Aunty Ashley is coming to grab her niece with Grandpa Les following quickly behind.

"Look at this, three of my favourite girls are here today," he said taking Sierra from Ashley.

"Not that I don't love seeing my favourite niece but what are you guys doing here today?"

"We're just showing Sierra around. Thought she'd like to see the place that's gonna take up all of mommy and daddy's time."

Sierra is already a daddy's girl so I know the second she's spotted Seth because she immediately has one little pudgy hand reaching out in his direction and a squealing chain of babble is falling from her lips.

I know it will only be a matter of time before Seth has Sierra in his arms, it's all he ever does. His little girl raises her arms and he picks her up. The man hardly puts her down.

Seth comes around Les and takes Sierra from him, already she's babbling non-stop. As soon as she's in his arms her hands are in his hair. She loves holding onto people's hair, but she loves Seth's hair the most.

"What'cha doing here, Reenie?" he asks though his focus and eyes are on Sierra. I don't answer for a minute and instead watch him babble back at Sierra and made funny faces. God he was just so handsome sometimes it took my breath away. "She should have told me my girls were coming, isn't that right, Ra-Ra."

I didn't like that he calls her Ra-Ra, so I was hoping to break him of it, it hadn't worked yet and she was starting to respond to it.

"I brought Sierra to the place that's going to take her mommy away as soon as next week. I thought she might like to see why It was so important."

Seth sighs heavily at me. "Aww, Reenie, it's only part-time, 3 days a week max," he reminds me but it doesn't hurt any less.

I pull Sierra out of his arms. "Me and Little Miss Sierra are going to go introduce ourselves to the staff in the back. Don't you have a customer to finish with?"

He glances back to the counter where the customer he was with is waiting patiently, and though I can tell he doesn't want to, he heads back to the counter. I head into the back, where I can already see some of the staff lining up to meet the newest Gold, with Les and Ashley following me.


Sabrina: The first week I'm back is trying. I can tell by the way the internet people stare at me when I ask them to do things for me that they don't want me bossing them around. I hate to admit it but I'm pretty sure they think that that only reason I'm Manager because I'm married to Seth, and maybe that was true but I'm pretty good at my job, or I'm trying to be.

So, on my third day, when Seth left me in charge while he went to get us lunch, I made a rash decision.

This lot became available and it had all these amazing sports cards in it, the tech who was looking at it told me it was a very, very big deal, so I had no choice but to bid on it. I said that the price had to be below 8 grand, since he said the lot was worth at the very least, 10 grand. But when the bid went in at 7 grand, I didn't feel better. I was worried that, as a Gold by marriage, Les wouldn't be as forgiving of me spending that kind of money if I didn't make it back. So the second that Seth came back I went to him to help me.


I'm only back in the shop for five minutes, I've just dropped off my dad and Ashley's lunch which I was kind enough to pick up, when disaster strikes. Sabrina and I had planned to eat our lunch together in my office so I'm not surprised when I get there and she's already in my office, but I can tell by the look on her face that she's upset about something. I've only been gone forty-five minutes. I can't even begin to fathom what could have gone wrong in that short amount of time.

But I join her in my office shut the door hand her the bag with our burritos in it and then give her my serious stare.

"What's wrong with you? You've got that I messed up look on your face."

Sabrina turns back to me a frown on her face. "I… I don't know… I made a quick decision and I think it might be a problem."

"Okay walk me through it."

"Okay, so Joe found a 900 card lot, and they were showcasing the best cards and I mean, I don't know about these things but he said they were heavy shit. Well… the bidding was going to end in five minutes so… I told him to bid…"

"Okay… how much were they going for?"

"6 grand."

Dear lord. I try to keep my face passive. "And we got them for?"

"Seven."

Seven grand?! Jesus. What kind of cards were in that fucking lot?

"See your face… that's not a good face."

"7 grand on cards, Reenie, did you talk my dad through it before you did it?"

"No, we didn't have the time…"

"Okay so he's going to see a surprise purchase on the company credit card. That's what I'm hearing."

Sabrina hung her head. I knew she was out of sorts at that moment. She had this irrational fear that the back IT guys weren't taking her seriously but I knew that couldn't be true. None of them would disrespect my wife like that.

"God, what kind of cards where they showcasing to make you think it was worth it… when you know nothing about cards."

"Uhm… and Michael Jordan autograph. Uhm Magic Johnson one v. one jersey. Some Babe Ruth relic card…"

None of that makes sense to me, mainly because she has no idea what she's talking about so she's gotta be saying words that make no sense to her. She must just have them wrong. But if it's what I think it might be, she might have hit the jackpot.

"Alright, start eating, I'm going to talk to Joe, see what it is he bid on, I'll be back. Don't panic and don't tell my dad yet."

I leave her in the office not sure how I'm going to save my wife from this, just that I know I'll take the blame if I have to. Anything to make sure she wasn't the one my dad yelled at.


Seth: My baby really did hit the Jackpot. The cards that she saw were a Michael Jordan autographed card. Magic Johnson one of one jersey card. Babe ruth dual relic one of five. The card has a piece of jersey and a piece of his pants. She clearly had no idea how amazing this lot was, but she had taken Joe's instinct and capitalized on it. If those were only some of the cards I couldn't wait to see what the other 900 cards would be. But I couldn't tell my dad simply because he wouldn't understand, and she hadn't gone to him for permission first. I just had to hope that he'd find out after I managed to sell some of the cards and get some of our money back.

Les: My son was an idiot if he thought I wouldn't notice a seven-thousand-dollar charge on the store credit card. Baseball and basketball cards, he said when I confronted him about it. Well I wasn't happy so I gave him a week to get rid of the lot or he'd be paying me back for all the money I was missing.


I was livid. Absolutely livid that Les gave us only a week to offload those cards. We definitely needed more time than that. I wanted to talk to Les but Seth wouldn't tell me. He just kept saying that he was going to take the blame cause he could handle Les yelling at him where as I couldn't. Which was true, I was probably liable to cry.

But at that moment, we were on the hook to pay for the cards ourselves and we couldn't afford to pay the difference, not with a baby that grew out of everything by the end of every week.

We were on our last day and Seth had a man coming in who was going to buy the whole lot. He was a little disappointed because they were probably going to lose a lot of profit selling them all at once instead of if he had been given the time to sell them all at once, but it was that or we owed Les money.

Seth had gotten so desperate that he started calling people and sending emails out to collectors to see if they were interested. Which worked great because they found a guy.

That afternoon, I followed Seth out onto the sales floor to the Sport Memorabilia counter. Joe lead the way with the box of cards to where the guy, Matt, was waiting for them.

We all shook hands and then I got to sit back and watch my baby work.

"I've got he opportunity for you to own something that I guarantee you have never seen before," he tells the guy and then he starts listing these cards. And Matt, well let's just say Matt's eyes lit up, he definitely hadn't see half of these cards before.

I could tell that he was going to buy them, I just knew it. We just had to get a good deal.

As soon as we were done wowing him, Matt asks: "What are you looking to get out of all these cards?"

And this was the kicker cause we were looking for a lot. "Right. I'm looking to get about 18 thousand."

He echoes the price looks at the cards a little longer and then says: "I was looking to spend somewhere between 3 to 4 thousand today."

And that is no where close to where we need it to be. He even has the nerve to ask: "What do you think?"

Seth shakes his head. "Four thousand dollars is just way too low." He picks up the card with the two pieces of fabric in it. "I mean this alone is going to be between five to seven hundred bucks."

Matt seems to take this in as Seth begins to outline how much all of these cards would go for if he sold them off piecemeal and once again I'm annoyed that Les put us in this position just because he was upset I didn't ask him first.

It would have taken me five minutes just to explain what we were bidding on, and I wouldn't have been able to accurately describe how good the deal was.

"We're a little far apart I think."

Yeah, no shit, Matt. But I don't say that to him. That would be rude and I'm trying super hard to be nice.

He asks if Seth can meet him somewhere in the middle and he obliges with maybe, 16 thousand dollars. But that's not enough either. He then asks if Seth can do better than 16 like maybe seven thousand and Seth practically moans. Yeah that price isn't going to do it for us either. I put a hand to his arm, just to show him that I'm supporting him and hit him with my apologetic eyes because it's my fault we're even in this mess.

Seth I quiet a minute but finally he says: "14 thousand." And then reminds Matt that we have 800 cards in that lot and the ones he was showing him add up to 4000 dollars right there, and that was just the first ten of the bunch.

"I'm thinking 12 may be a good number."

Ohh, would that be a good number? I'd take that number. Seth dithers a bit, he glances back to where Les is hovering over by furs and then he takes the deal. He shakes Matt's hand and I shake his hand too, and then Les comes over to thank Matt and tells him that he just saved Seth's ass. Like it was any of his business.

As they head to the ticket counter to take payment, I can hear Les harping on my wonderful Seth.

"You know Les… I was the one who bought the lot. I didn't have time to come ask you… I trusted my gut and Seth took the blame so you wouldn't yell at me," I tell him and Les smiles at me.

"Well Damn, Reenie, that was one hell of a good call! I'm surprised you knew anything about cards in the first place," he says and then walks away. I glance to Seth who looks livid by that response and I feel for him.

I don't know if it was because we made a profit on the lot that had him in a good mood, but I knew, from now on I was just going to come clean with Les right away.