Chapter Text
Dave flicked the lights on in the pawn shop with a sigh. Dust covered a majority of the shop these days. He didn’t have a knack for cleaning, and his products weren’t exactly of the highest quality anyway. Not a lot of people stopped in, mostly the odd weirdo looking to pawn something, or sometimes a teen trying to steal something. He wasn’t even sure if he should open the shop most days, but he knew his dad would be pissed if he just kept it closed.
Dave pulled his old laptop onto the counter and opened up his browser. He tapped at the keys aimlessly, not pressing hard enough to actually type anything. He looked over his shoulder and then glanced back at the front door to make sure no one was coming toward the shop before typing “flights to New Zealand” into the search bar. His finger hovered over the enter key as he stared at the screen. He let out another big sigh and shut the laptop. Who cared about stupid New Zealand anyway? It’s not like there was anything to really see there. It’s a small country, not to mention boring as all hell compared to Manhattan. But as much as Dave tried to push away the feeling, he really really missed his old friends. Half the time he couldn’t even remember their first names, but he could never forget the feeling he’d get when they’d come to the store to ask him for advice. No one had ever respected Dave that way. Before Bret and Jemaine had entered his life, Dave thought of himself as a real loser, but the two of them seemed like they took his opinion seriously. They seemed so interested in what he would tell them, and he really wanted to give them good answers, so at some point he started fabricating his stories. Just a little at first, but when he’d see their heads nod at his words, he couldn’t help but want to spice things up. They asked good questions, and he was determined to give them good answers every time.
Dave opened his laptop back up and deleted what was previously in the search bar. In its place, he simply typed “porn.” There, at least if someone walked in, he wouldn’t be searching for something embarrassing. Once again he didn’t hit the enter key, just left the screen as it was.
Dave walked around the counter toward the door and finally unlocked it and flipped the sign to “Open.”
Dave was staring at the ceiling and counting the tiles with his feet propped up on the counter when he heard the bell jingle. A young woman with short curly hair cautiously walked into the shop, wide eyes looking around. Dave thought she looked familiar, but couldn’t exactly place it. It had occurred to him that he wasn’t a very attentive person, but every time he vowed to be more present in his surroundings, he got distracted.
“You're Dave, right?” the woman asked. He looked up at her, removing his feet from the counter.
“Yeah.” He was cold and hesitant, as was his usual exterior.
“Wow,” she looked around the shop, “I always saw Bret and Jemaine come in and out of here, but I never stopped to check it out because it always looked like a real dump.” Despite her words, her face told that she was in awe of his family’s shitty little pawn shop.
“What are you, some kind of groupie?” He cocked an eyebrow, looking her up and down. She was cute enough, he could see one of the guys dating her. She blushed at the question and a large expression appeared on her face.
“Why, do I seem like I could be one?” She brought a hand up to play with her hair, bashful. Dave felt a little put off by her enthusiasm. What was this chick’s deal? “Well I wasn’t exactly a groupie,” she looked over at the front window where a couple of guitars were hanging, “just their biggest fan ever…” Dave gave her another look up and down, still trying to get a read on her. She looked back at him again. “Do you ever miss them? Bret and Jemaine?” Her expression turned from wistful child to sad puppy.
“Bret and Jemaine?” Dave was continually confused by her.
“Yeah.” She nodded, not breaking eye contact.
“Well…” He took a long pause, not sure what to reveal or not reveal about himself to this strange woman, “not really,” he lied. “They were always pretty annoying. They were always like ‘wot?’ ‘wot?’” His imitation of their accent was poor.
“Oh.” Her face went cold. They stared at each other in silence for a moment before she turned around and headed for the door.
“Wait-” Dave called out just as she put her hand on the push bar. She stopped and turned her head around. “Look, I don’t…” He wasn’t sure what he was doing, but he had been feeling so lonely lately without those two European idiots. He barely stopped to wonder if New Zealand is actually a part of the EU before continuing, now having her attention. “I guess I…do miss them…a little bit…” He avoided eye contact, feeling incredibly vulnerable.
“I do too.” She quickly walked back to the counter that he sat behind, her eyes wide again. “I miss them so much that sometimes I think about buying a plane ticket to New Zealand and never coming back.” There was a desperation in her voice, but Dave wasn’t as put off as he had been before. “Do you ever think about that? Leaving this life behind, chasing your true love?”
“I don’t know about true love…” Dave furrowed his eyebrows. Sure maybe he missed the company, but “love” is a pretty strong word.
“Well love can come in all kinds of forms, Dave.” She nodded her head, maintaining eye contact that Dave felt was a little intense, yet couldn’t seem to break. “You can love someone romantically of course, or you could love them like a friend, or you could love them like two sons that you carried in your womb for nine months…” Dave squinted at that part, but her eyes had glazed over, her mind now somewhere else. “Or it could be a combination of all three…” There was a pause while Dave attempted to process someone having romantic, friendly, and maternal feelings for someone all at the same time, and the woman continued to stare into space, not blinking. Dave wasn’t really one for “love.” Sure he had friends, and he supposed that if you really wanted to you could say that he loved his family, but he just wasn’t really interested. All of those big emotions felt foreign to him. Confusing, even. He didn’t think he’d ever been “in love” with anyone, and he was perfectly comfortable with that.
Dave cleared his throat, now realizing just how long they’d been sitting in silence. The woman shook her head, now back to reality. She looked at him again.
“I’m Mel, by the way.” She stuck out her hand. He looked at the hand and back to her face before placing his own in hers and shaking it.
“Dave,” he responded. He wasn’t sure why, but there was a sense of comfort in grasping her hand. The only connection between them was their friendship with Bret and Jemaine, but it was enough.
“Yeah I know.” She laughed, holding onto his hand a little longer than he’d expected. Still not totally comfortable with her energy, he pulled his hand away and subtly wiped it on his jeans. He didn’t want to be rude, but this chick was a little weird. “Hey, do you by any chance sell international calling cards?”
“Oh.” Dave didn’t expect to make a sale today, and was pleasantly surprised that she wanted to actually purchase something rather than just stand around forcing him to feel things about his old friends. “Yeah, here.” He crouched under the counter to dig around for a small cardboard box. It wasn’t often that people bought them from his shop. Usually just he and his parents would use them to call family back in India. He wiped some dust off of it with his fingers and placed it on the counter. He grabbed one card out of the box and inspected it for a price tag. When he looked up, she was holding a crisp $100 bill.
“How much can I get for this?” The intensity had returned to her eyes.
“Shit.” He was surprised by her offer. “Uhh…” He started to do some quick calculations in his head. If each card was $20, and she had $100, that comes out to…
“Dave!” She clapped her hands in front of his face, snapping him out of his basic math wormhole.
“Hang on, I’m figuring it out!” He snapped back at her and went back to thinking. If $100 divided by 10 is 10…
“How much are the cards?”
“20 bucks, dollar a minute.”
“So five. I can get five cards.” She was waving the large bill in front of his face now, obviously having grown impatient. He snatched it out of her hand and grabbed a stack of cards to count them out. He could at least do that right.
He counted out the cards and opened the register, placing the hundred dollar bill in. Not bad for a single transaction.
“Well Dave,” she smiled, pleased with herself, “thank you for your time.”
“Sure.” He crossed his arms and gave a single nod. She started for the door, holding the calling cards right in front of her face while maintaining a big, cheesy grin. The bell jingled again as she exited the store, and Dave was once again left in silence. This time though it was a little more comfortable. He felt a sort of catharsis in meeting Mel.
The rest of the day was uneventful. A few people came in looking around, but mostly Dave just sat around twiddling his thumbs. After he closed up, he thought about the box of calling cards again. He brought it back out to the counter and held one in his hand, looking at the instructions on the back. It hadn’t occurred to him that he could just call his friends up. He shrugged and picked up the landline, following the instructions on the card. He typed in the number on the card, input the pin, and heard the dial tone. There was just one thing he forgot: he had no idea what either of their phone numbers were. “Ugh,” he groaned out loud to himself, and slammed the receiver back onto the mount.