I gently tug on her ponytail. “You’re getting the wedding of your dreams and you don’t have to lift a finger. In my opinion, that should make me the best husband ever.”
Joey rolls her eyes and laughs. “Come on, we have company that we have to entertain.” She drags me outside even though I come willingly. When we get out there, everyone is sitting around the table, about to eat.
“Oh, I have stuff in the refrigerator,” Joey says. Rebekah stands and offers to help. I want to run back into the house, but Rob and Bronx look at me like they need to be saved. Reluctantly, I sit down next to my mother.
“You have a very nice house here.”
“Thank you,” I say, honestly. The compliment is unexpected, but I’ll take it.
“Does she work and pay rent or does she just clean and give you sex?”
Bronx spits his beer out all over the table and starts coughing. Rob pats his back and any ounce of compassion I had for this women is now gone. The gasp coming from my right is from Joey, who heard everything.
“Actually, Joey owns the house.” Rebekah puts a bowl of potato salad down on the table. “She lets Josh live here.”
“Excuse me?” my mother says.
I look to Rebekah who smirks.
“In case you didn’t know, Joey is royalty as far as us Americans go.”
“How so?”
I roll my eyes at how my mother’s demeanor has changed suddenly.
“Well, I don’t know if I should really divulge Joey’s financial status. I mean that is really for her, you know, if she wants to tell you who exactly she is.”
I glance quickly at Joey, who is hanging her head. It’s only by chance that I see her laughing.
“Well, Josephine, what is it that you do?”
“Joey, her name is Joey,” I tell my mother.
“Surely it’s short for something more professional.”
“Yeah, no, it’s my name,” Joey says. “As for what I do, I sign up for reality television shows and marry rich actors.” Joey shrugs while the rest of the table breaks out in laughter, except my mother narrows her eyes at Rebekah and I know that her wrath is going to be entertaining.
I pace the floor, waiting for my mom to arrive. I wanted to go and pick her up, but Josh said that with the cameras already following me, it’d be a shit storm of media attention that I don’t want or need. When I complained, he laughed and told me to get used to it.
“You might as well sit down,” he calls to me from the living room.
“She might be here soon.”
“Babe.” His voice is right behind me and his hands are now on my shoulders. Sighing, I lean my head back into him. The small amount of anxiety I’ve been feeling is starting to dissipate. “She just landed. Give them time to get here. Traffic is a bitch right now.”
Behind us I hear someone grumble about having to edit his language. For the past three days the cameras have been on us. We have granted them access to every part of our lives, except for what happens in our bedroom and bathroom. If people want to see
what I’m eating for breakfast each morning or how Josh lounges on the couch, they’ll get to. Nothing is off limits. The other condition we placed on the production crew was that we wouldn’t allow cameras to be mounted in the home so if they wanted to film us, it had to be a live action crew and that means no nighttime filming. The last thing I wanted was to wake in the middle of the night and stumble into a tripod or trip over a crowd. When the lights go out, they go home. Home being the camper that is currently parked in our driveway.
Some may ask why I agreed to such an intrusive invasion of privacy and I wish the answer were simple. It’s not. In the end, it came down to money.
When I returned from my three-day hiatus, Josh sat me down and explained the contract and everything that it entailed. Mostly it would be the same, except they wanted to pay us and the pay was negotiable. The starting price tag was one million dollars to follow us around, film our lives while we got ready for our wedding, and to have the exclusive rights to film our wedding and reception. I was ready to sign because it’s what Josh wanted. For him the price wasn’t enough, and when he called Barry asking for more, I thought he’d tell us to take a hike, but he came back with a few more zeroes on the proposed figure and that was enough for Josh. To think that someone is paying us millions of dollars for exclusive rights to our wedding is crazy.
“I’m just anxious to see her, that’s all.”
“I know, me too.” Since our trip, Josh and my parents have grown very close and I honestly couldn’t have asked for anything better. Although I do wish my mother hadn’t asked for Josh’s underwear size, even if she’s shopping early for Christmas and buying him things for his stocking. There are some things a mother-in-law doesn’t need to know.
Speaking of mothers-in-law, mine is still in town, but holed up at a hotel somewhere. There was a long, drawn out battle on why she couldn’t stay here that ended with Josh suggesting she stay at the Beverly Hills hotel. She loved that idea until he told her he’d only pay for one night. He also failed to mention that my mother would be arriving soon and that the guest bedroom was for her. I know once Nina finds out she’ll be upset. I don’t think it’ll be because my mother is here, or the fact that Nina isn’t spending time with Josh, it’ll be because she’s not staying in our house so her social status as Josh’s mother isn’t getting the boost she wants.