The Moment We Began (A Fairhope New Adult Romance) (11 page)

Jenna’s car is idling just beyond the front
steps. She gets out and lifts up on her tip-toes, giant purple
sunglasses shielding her eyes from the sun. “I hope you don’t
mind that it’s me,” she says. “Leigh Anne got a
call from her attorney’s office that they needed her for a
conference call in half an hour. She called me and asked if I’d
take over.”

I frown and pull the shoulder strap over my body.
I clutch the bag. Can I trust Jenna to help me and not blab about it?
I barely know her. And I’m not entirely sure she even likes me
very much.

She pounds the top of the car. “I know it’s
not your usually fancy ride, but she’s my baby,” she
says. “She got me here all the way from California.”

“I thought Leigh Anne said you were from
Macon,” I say, walking the rest of the way down the front steps
of the house.

She shrugs. “Nah. I went to school in Macon
for a year, then transferred here to FCU,” she says. “But
I grew up in California.”

“I don’t mind the car,” I say,
realizing she thought I was frowning about her car not being nice
enough. “It’s just that I…”

I glance back toward the front door to make sure
Mom isn’t sneakily standing right behind me listening to every
word I’m saying.

“I have something I need to do that’s
very…secret. No one can find out about this, okay? Can I trust
you?”

As I say it, I know it’s a dumb question to
ask someone directly. People who aren’t trustworthy are still
probably going to say yes. Who’s really going to admit that no,
they can’t be trusted? Not many people, that’s for sure.

And most people really can’t be trusted.

“There’s only one way to find out,”
she says. She pounds the top of the car again, then laughs and
disappears inside.

I blink and stand there for a second, a little
stunned. Was that a yes? Or a maybe?

I get in and she turns the radio up.

“Where to, little lady?”

I bite my lip. “I’m honestly not
sure,” I say. “Can you just start driving? We’ll
figure it out on the way.”

“Sure,” she says.

She rolls the car around the looped driveway, then
out the front gate and into the street.

She throws a quick glance toward my bag. “What
you got?”

I pull the bag tighter against my body. “This
is part of the whole trust thing,” I say. “I don’t
want anyone to find out what I’m doing or why I’m doing
it.”

“In this town, you realize that’s like
saying you don’t want anyone to know your family has money,
right?” She laughs.

“This is important,” I say. “I
know people talk, but I was hoping we could find a place where people
could be persuaded to keep their mouths shut.”

Jenna puts on her turn signal and swings her car
into the parking lot of McDonalds.

“Listen,” she says, turning all the
way toward me in her bucket seat, “I know we haven’t
spent a ton of time hanging out, but I know what you’re going
through. Whatever you need to do, I’m here for you. Pinky
swear. You can tell me and I promise I’ll take it to my grave
if you ask me to.”

I look down at the bag in my lap. I have no idea
if I can really trust her, but right now, she’s my best hope of
getting this money on time.

I take a deep breath, then tell her about the baby
in the hospital and how my parents cut me off.

When I finish my explanation, her eyes are a
little shiny and she’s staring at me like I’m some kind
of alien.

“What?”

She raises her eyebrows and holds her hands up. “I
had all these scenarios running around in my head. Like maybe you
were wanting to run away because your parents beat you when they
found out about the wreck or that you had to take this bag full of
unmarked bills to some cop as payment for letting you off the hook. I
thought this was going to be some shady shit,” she says. “I’m
not gonna lie. The fact that you’re selling stuff to pay for a
baby’s surgery is probably one of the biggest damn surprises of
my life.”

I lean my head back against the headrest. “You
don’t think much of me, do you?” I ask. “How come
you never came to any of my parties?”

“I try to stay away from people who have a
lot of money,” she says. “In my experience, they end up
being egotistical assholes who only care about themselves and will
step on whoever they have to to get what they want. But since I met
Leigh Anne, I’ve been in constant amazement about how strong
and selfless some of the women in this town can be. Even the richest
ones. It’s truly eye-opening, because I never met anyone like
the two of you in my life.”

I study her. She’s not afraid to say
whatever she’s thinking, and I’m not used to that. Most
people would have lied and said they like me and that I was being
silly for thinking otherwise. Jenna didn’t even hesitate to
tell me the truth.

“So what would you have done if this really
was full of unmarked bills or whatever?”

“I would have driven you where you needed to
go, and I would have kept my thoughts to myself,” she says. She
pulls her sunglasses down over her eyes and turns forward. “Or
I would have grabbed the bag, kicked your ass out of the car, and run
like hell.”

I laugh as she pulls out of the parking lot and
heads south on Main Street.

Jenna turns onto the highway and starts heading
out of Fairhope.

I turn and look back at the road. “Where are
you taking us?”

“I thought you said you wanted to be
discreet. That’s not happening if Fairhope. Look, if you want
to sell your stuff for cash as fast as you can, the best way to do
that is at a pawn shop,” she says. “You can either pawn
it or sell it.”

“What does pawning it do?”

She looks over at me, tilting her chin down so I
can see her eyes over the top of her sunglasses. “You don’t
know how pawn shops work?”

I shrug, feeling stupid. “I’ve watched
Pawn Stars before, but usually people just want to sell their stuff.
What happens when they pawn it?”

“Pawning is more of a cash advance kind of
thing,” she says. “Or a very high-interest loan with your
stuff as collateral. Instead of actually selling the item, you’ll
make a contract with them where they give you cash to borrow for the
month and at the end of the month, you either pay them back with
interest and get your stuff back or you pay just the interest and
have to come back again next month. If you don’t pay, you lose
the item you pawned and they can now sell it in the store.”

“What kind of interest are we talking here?”

“It depends,” she says. “Most
places, it ends up being something like fifteen to twenty percent
after all the interest and fees.”

My jaw practically hits the floor. “That
can’t be right. That’s highway robbery,” I say,
shaking my head. “There’s no way they’re charging
twenty percent interest on a loan for one month.”

She raises and eyebrow. “Yeah, it’s
crazy, but it’s true,” she says. She eyes my bag. “Are
you wanting to permanently part with the stuff in that bag? Or pawn
it?”

“It depends on how much I can get for
everything,” I say. “I’m willing to sell some of
the jewelry and the clothes and stuff, but there are a few items I
really can’t afford to sell.”

“I’m going to take you to a really
good place in Savannah,” she says. “The guy that owns it
is a real character, but he’s fair and he’ll help you
keep this under the table.”

I pull the bag closer to my chest. I’m
stepping way out of my comfort zone, here. “How do you know all
this stuff?”

She smiles. “We don’t all have parents
who can help us out or pay tuition,” she says. “And
working at a restaurant means you never really know how much you’re
going to make every night. Sometimes I come up short on the rent.”

I feel like an idiot. It never occurred to me
Jenna might be struggling with money. “I guess I just assumed
your parents paid for your apartment or something,” I say.
“Most people I know—”

“Most people you know live on a completely
different plane of existence than us mere mortals,” she says.
“It’s no big deal, really. I get by just fine on my own,
and I don’t have to worry about anyone telling me what to do or
yelling at me when I fuck up.”

“Must be nice,” I mumble.

“It is,” she says. “But if I had
access to things like tennis courts and private pools and a yacht, I
doubt I ever would have moved out either.”

“It’s a blessing and a curse,” I
say. “My parents protect me from a lot of things and make sure
I have whatever I need or want. But they also shelter me and do their
best to control me. I hate to complain about it, because I know how
lucky I am to have them. At the same time, though, they’ve
always put so much pressure on Preston and me.”

“Your life is your own, though, you know?
You can make excuses all you want, but in the end, you’re the
one who decides the path your life takes,” she says. “If
you want to be more independent, then do it. What’s stopping
you? Look at Leigh Anne. Her mom’s probably one of the meanest
people I’ve ever known in my life. She did everything she could
to control Leigh Anne, and it worked for years. But as soon as she
decided to get a job, get her own apartment, start thinking about
what she really wanted out of life, she kind of broke free from all
that. Her mom still says mean things sometimes, but now Leigh Anne
just doesn’t put up with it.”

“I wish I could be more like that,” I
say. “My mother isn’t mean. My parents are great, really.
They just want the best for us and have these set ideas about what
that means.”

I think about the baby growing inside me. This is
seriously going to rock my parents’ plans for my future.

“Just because they want it, though, doesn’t
mean you have to do it,” she says. “It’s your life,
not theirs.”

I stare forward as we cross into downtown
Savannah. Jenna makes it sound so easy. Like all I have to do is move
out, get a job and start living the life I want and I’ll be
happy. But I know it’s a lot more complicated than that. I’m
afraid I would need a level of strength I just don’t have
inside me.

We sit in silence as she navigates the streets.
She hasn’t taken us to the pretty River Street area of
Savannah. The streets here are full of brightly-colored houses with
damaged roofs. Gas stations. Liquor stores. Fast food restaurants.
I’ve never been to this part of the city.

She pulls into the parking lot of a dirty strip
mall and parks in front of a tiny little shop called Gold-Silver
Pawn. It’s the kind of place you might overlook a thousand
times. I’m starting to doubt trusting her with this. I don’t
have much time and I can’t see how a small, seedy little place
like this is going to get me five grand.

Jenna laughs and I turn to look at her.

“What’s so funny?” I ask.

“The look on your face,” she says.
“It’s going to be okay. I promise.”

She snatches the bag from my lap and gets out of
the car. I follow her inside where it’s dark and cluttered.
Tall silver racks hold junk from floor to ceiling. DVD players,
Xbox’s, CD’s, clothes, lamps. Nothing’s really put
in any kind of logical order. It’s more just scattered and
thrown across the shelves in basic groupings. The path through the
racks is narrow and we have to carefully scoot through so we don’t
knock anything off.

There are only two other people in the store that
I can see. There’s a black guy with a shaved head sitting on a
stool near the front counter. He’s got one foot up and one foot
flat against the floor and he’s wearing a black jacket that’s
hanging open just enough for me to see he’s got a small gun
tucked into the waistband of his jeans.

He catches me staring and he adjusts his jacket to
hide the gun.

I look away as fast as I can. I have no idea what
I’m doing in a place like this.

Behind the counter is a really short, fat guy who
looks like he could be a mobster or something. He’s wearing
four or five ridiculously big gold chains and he’s got a
Yankee’s baseball cap on that’s turned to the side.

He smiles at us. “Jenna, baby, how you
doin’?”

“Heya, Rocco,” she says. She jumps up
on the counter and reaches across to give him a huge hug. “This
is my friend Penny.”

Rocco lifts his head up once in greeting. “What
brings you two in here?”

Jenna puts my bag up on the counter. She turns and
looks around the store. “Just us in here right now, right?”

“Looks like it,” the guy on the stool
says.

“Okay, good,” she says. “Here’s
the deal. My friend here needs cash fast. Off the record.”

“Whoa, now,” Rocco says, holding both
hands up defensively. “Off the record isn’t something I
do for just anybody. You know that.”

“You owe me, Rocco,” she says. “I’m
calling in a personal favor. Please, you gotta help her.”

“I don’t gotta do nothin’,”
he says. He shrugs and eyes the bag. “But for you, I’ll
take a look.”

I step closer. The diamond bracelet is still in
the bag, and I don’t really want to just offer that up first
thing, but I have no idea how to do this and I don’t want to
say something wrong or piss these guys off.

I tap Jenna’s arm and she ignores me.

I tap it again.

She jerks her head toward me. “What?”

I lean toward her and whisper in her ear. “There’s
a bracelet in there that I’m not sure I can sell. Can I just
get that out first? Then he can look at the rest of it.”

“Yeah, sure.” She scoots the bag
toward me and I unzip it. I have to dig through to find the bracelet.
I close my fist around it, and stuff it in my pocket.

“Done,” I say with a smile. I’ve
never felt more awkward in my life.

Jenna pushes the bag toward Rocco.

He opens it and starts laying items out one at a
time. He makes notes on a pad of paper. It takes him about twenty
minutes, but he finally circles something, then turns the paper
around and scoots it across the counter toward us.