Pawnshops and Carousels

AvalonReeseFanFics

A/N: Well this has been a long time coming. I'm so sorry my wonderful readers, I had this chapter ready to go ages ago I just put off posting, not sure why. My motivation has been scattered, been having a real hard time keeping up with my own posting schedule and all my writing. I'm going to try to be regular with this story though. Only 6 more chapters and we'll be done. Isn't that exciting?! I'm hoping to have this story done before the new year! Fingers crossed! Don't forget to leave a review or a fav or a follow and I'll see you next week.

Chapter 34


Sabrina: Things have been going well, sort of. There are still small arguments, like Les handing out two massive loans he had no business approving. Like we almost had a multi-million-dollar art deal which turned out to be some kind of scam. I called that from the beginning and no one listened to me, too blinded by the dollar they could have been making to see it for what it was. I didn't say I told you so but I should have. But in the major argument department, everything has been good. And then Seth decided that he wanted to shoot a commercial.

Les of course was against it, in fact everyone was against Seth on this commercial. But Seth had a plan, and he didn't tell me about it, which is good cause I would have nixed it immediately. They went to a race track and raced for it, winner got to choose if they'd do the commercial. Seth won. We're going to shoot the commercial and then unreasonable, very hormonal me cried for two days straight just thinking of what might have happened if my husband, the love of my life and the father of my children had died in a racing accident. It took him those two days to calm me down. And he promised to never do it again.

But hey… we both got what he wanted… Seth is never going to put himself in undo danger like that again and Seth gets to shoot his commercial.


I did a lot of research, talked to a lot of directors before settling on Christo who fit our vision and our budget.

I'm immediately excited the second I see Christo in the shop, because he wants to talk storyboard with me and my dad so we're on the same page. And what he talks us through is exactly what we wanted and envisioned ourselves. So, with my dad's blessing, we move straight on to filming.

Frist Christo kind of mills around the shop looking for customers and staff that he wants to cast in our commercial. He does this while his crew sets up the lights and everything else he needs.

At first I kind of mill around with him, then I get distracted by my regular duties in shop and then further distracted when my pregnant wife shows up with my daughter. Sabrina looks about ready to pop, even though she has at least two more months to go, but she's officially on maternity leave and not supposed to be here. She's not supposed to be stressed and as much I love this place, I know it's stressful to work here, even just to be here sometimes.

But it's me who ends up being stressed out because Sabrina says: "Uh… you know Christo's been talking to Ashley for like the last ten minutes right?"

And then I'm dashing over to rescue him from her because Ashley's been in a snit since I won that bet.

When I get out there, Ashley is glaring at the man while he stands there staring at her. Ashley turns to me the second I get there though.

"You didn't introduce me to the director, Seth."

And I know right then and there that she's going to fuck with me on this. I just know it.

"Ash, Christo. Christo, my sister Ashley," I say quickly hoping to get her off of this topic ASAP and away from him.

"We've already met," Christo says and I internally wince. God I hope he's good at directing because he's acting pretty stupid right now.

"So… am I going to be in the commercial, Seth?" Ashley asks me, pinning me with a defiant glare, daring me to say no. Oh how I want to say no.

"I'd love for you to be in the commercial," Christo says for me and I defer to him.

Ashley glares at the both of us for a long while and then shakes her head. "Yeah, alright."

As she storms away I smile apologetically at Christo who does not seem put off at all. He smiled lazily at me and then went off to do his thing. Great, well… now I was going to have to worry about Ashley now.


My dad is having fun. We're starting with him. We have the camera going through the door, all he has to do is open the door, smile, wave and say hello. And he's laughing. I mean, I'm glad he's having fun, but I also need him to be serious.

Then, when we've almost got it, Ashley gets in the shot with her sour puss and her sour attitude and completely ruins the whole shot. We have to take it again.

Then it's time for the voice overs. I think my dad is doing a good job but Christo has him trying all these goofy things and voice exercises that make no sense. So he starts singing the alphabet so Christo will leave him alone.

Then he's laughing through the voice overs. And again, I'm glad he's having fun but I need him to be serious.

Then it comes to Ashley's turn, her point to shine. Then she's having issues.

She got hit in the head with a microphone, she drops the coat she's supposed to be showing off. It takes forever to get her shot done, I say nothing though I'm seething.

Then we shoot my dad again, have him interacting with a customer, and he's giggling again. Seriously dad, get it together.

Next is my bit. They wanted me to play with one our customer's children, I pulled in my daughter instead. Sierra loves playing with me, now that she's walking. So I have a lot of fun getting her to toss a ball at me, which rolls more than tosses, and the shot includes her running up to give me a hug.

I like it, I like that I have my daughter in the commercial. Scratch that, I love that she's in it, even if they can't see her face, something I requested cause she was too young for that. Or at least in my eyes.

I'm standing with Sierra in my arms when Ashley says: "I just don't see what that has to do with pawnshops. It's like hey welcome to my store, we're playing games here. I unno, it's weird."

She's only saying it to fuck with me. Because I'm the one that took charge of this and she's feeling left out or like I usurped control. It's a petty move and I wish I could say that I'm not letting it get to me. Problem is, I am.

"It's your call, Christo," I say though I'm scowling at my sister. Not even Sierra's tight grip on my neck is making me feel better. "If you think the shot's good then it's good."

"Hey Seth!" Ashley cries, "Wanna play catch."

She's taunting me and I know it. Except what I'm not expecting is Sierra to literally lob that ball at Ashley. Not even Ashley was expecting it so the ball bounced off of her head.

From where Sabrina is standing, I can hear her laugh. "Serves her right."

I try not to smile and then the urge to smile fades entirely when Christo says: "We'll try shooting something else and we can decide between the two when we're editing."

Ashley smiles triumphantly at me, but I shake my head. I hand my daughter off to Sabrina who watched the whole by-play silently but as I turn to walk away I hear her say: "That was mean, Ash."

Well at least my wife has my back.


We're standing in the TV section. We literally closed shop for an hour to unveil this, I'm that fucking excited.

I have Sabrina here, she has Sierra on her hip who has gotten into repeating the wordy daddy whenever she sees me, nonstop because she knows I can't resist her. But I'm resisting her right now and it's surprising her, I can tell.

"Thank you, guys for gathering around. So, we filmed the commercial and I just got back the edited version. I have it here for you guys to see first and I think you guys are going to like what we have."

Ashley has this shit eating grin on her face as she claps her hands. "I'm so excited."

"I'm sure you are," I say.

I did a lot of bitching about that day of shooting to Sabrina who listened and sympathized as she always did. I told her I wanted to get back at Ashley, I just didn't know what I wanted to do. Sabrina gave me some prank ideas but nothing that really stuck, but she did warn me not to go to far. Because Ashley, she'd go nuts on me if I went too far.

I uh…I may have gone too far but I'm pretty sure it's more than warranted.

So I press play and then the video is playing. It starts with my dad welcoming the viewer into the store and then we're show casing happy patrons and our merchandise. They took out the shot with my daughter and replaced it with me catching a basket ball, we've got my dad with a guitar, Dan with a chainsaw and then the commercial is over.

And I have two angry face and my wife coming at me.

Sabrina at least is happy. She hugs me close with a: "Awww, look at my handsome man in a commercial. I'm so proud of you."

Then she kisses me on the cheek and hands my daughter over to me so she'll stop saying daddy over and over.

But the two angry faces of Karen and Ashley have not gone away.

"Uh? Where were we in the family commercial?" Ashley asks.

I shrug. "You know, a lot of footage had to be cut…"

"You cut our parts?" comes from both Ashley and Karen. Ashley is glaring at me because obviously this is my fault, Karen looks hurt and is mostly looking at her Uncle Les as he's the big boss around here.

"Did anyone see me in it?" Ashley shouts to our staff who are all avoiding her eyes.

"You were in it for a second," I tell her. "I saw an arm."

Ashley turns on me. "What are you paying me back for something?"

Yes. I didn't mean to get Karen though, we literally just didn't have room for her. I chose to cut Ashley though.

And Sabrina must have realized that cause she's staring at me funny, but I'm hoping she keeps her mouth shut until we get home.

"No, I just don't see why you care, you didn't want to be in it, remember?"

But Ashley is screaming and yelling about how we took up her time with this and she didn't even make the cut. And how that was absolutely stupid.

As she's shouting at everyone Sabrina leans into me and asks: "Please tell me you didn't do this purposely because she can gave you a hard time with the commercial."

The problem was Ashley somehow heard her and she was on me in a second. "Oh so you are paying me back for something!"

Luckily my dad intervenes. "All that matters is that sign. American Jewelry and Loan, so let it go Ashley," he cries. He then gave me a kiss of congratulations.

Ashley had stopped yelling but I could tell by the fire in her eyes that I had it coming. I didn't know when, but she was going to get me back. I just knew it.