She stopped a couple feet in front of me, looking me upand down with her large, green eyes. “You’re alone,”she noted, handing me a d...rink. I shrugged. “Karen couldn’t make it. She had a party oncampus tonight.And her parents are in town.” Talia smiled. “I’m sorry.” I smiled back. “Yeah. It’s a shame.” We stared at each other for a few moments. We both knewthat tonight would be special. And then: “Dance?” I. "I changed clothes and we piled into the car. We drove for about two hours and decided to stop for something to eat. After dinner we got back in the car. I had tried to get more information out of the two ladies, but they were surprisingly tight-lipped tonight.At about 10pm, we finally pulled up in front of an older, slightly run down home. It was large, but had seen better days from the way it looked. The paint was peeling a little from what I could see in the dark, and some of the shrubs. Every day I had four hours on, two hours off and then another four hours on. One of my shifts coincided with one of Johnny’s and hanging out with him became the highlight of my day. We could relate to each other well and I shared my feelings of being dissatisfied with my life, even though on the surface I had everything I believed one needed to be happy. I told him how I was fed up with academic life but that I wasn’t interested in pursuing a career either, how my relationship with my. ’ We spent some more time talking until my sister knocked on the door to announce dinner. We got up immediately and as I opened the door I told my sister, ‘No sex today.’ She always seemed obsessed with whether I was having sex. After Corey left I told my parents I wanted to speak to them and I brought out the paper on which I had written the promise to marry whomever they selected for me. ‘I want you to know I still consider this to be binding,’ I told them. ‘Susie, you know you don’t need to.