“Are you both willing to sign nondisclosure agreements for what I’m about to tell you?” I ask.
“Ainsley, tell us what’s going on,” my dad says.
“I didn’t get married on the show, and I need you to sign NDAs for the rest of the story.”
“We’ll do whatever we can to make sure our daughter is safe,” my mom says.
“Okay, well, so do you remember Dex Bradley?” I ask.
“One of Ivy’s brothers?” my mom asks. She always knew everything about everyone in town, likely because of her position as a fourth-grade teacher.
“Yes.”
“The troublemaker or the baseball player?” she presses.
I clear my throat. One of the middle brothers, Archer, plays baseball, where the rest of the brothers opted for football. So that leaves exactly one option. “The troublemaker.”
“Oh, right,” she says. “The other one was Archer. He plays for Vegas now, right? The Heat?”
“Yes,” I confirm.
“So what about the troublemaker?”
“Can we not call him that?” I ask, though if I were to tell her the whole truth—that I’m helping nanny for the kid his ex who had to go to jail dropped off without ever having told him that he even had a kid—it wouldn’t exactly negate her nickname for him.
“Rebel? Bad boy? Pot-stirrer?”
“God, Mom, stop. Look, he took me in when he found out what happened on the show, and he’s been nothing short of wonderful to me. And I just wanted to get ahead of the media when they find out and make this information public. So we, uh, well, we decided we could both benefit from being seen together in public, especially with some things that have recently happened both for him and for myself, so, uh, we sort of decided to get married.”
Silence greets me on the other end of the line, and for a split second I think my mom might’ve messed something up with the phone since it wouldn’t be the first time that’s happened. “Mom? Dad? You there?”
My dad clears his throat. “We’re here.”
“Isn’t he much older than you, sweetheart?” my mother asks.
“He’s thirty-three.”
“So eleven years,” she says flatly.
“Yes.”
“He’s only ten years younger thanme,” she says. “There’s less distance between him and me than there is between him and you.”
“Gross, Mom.”
“Oh, honey,” my mom says as if she can’t even take the mistake I’m making. “Is this real?”
“No,” I admit. “That’s sort of the whole thing and also why I need you to sign an NDA. It’s just for the next two years, and nobody can know it’s not real.” I leave out theand six monthsbit.
“This is a mistake, baby girl. Don’t do it,” my mom says.
I can tell my dad is trying to calm her down when he asks, “When is the wedding?”
“It was earlier today,” I admit.
My mom flies into hysterics. “You’re married, and I missed it?”
“It’s fine, Mom. You knew this might happen when I went onto the show, remember?”
