When the story I’m about to tell you happened, I was just
twenty-one, engaged to be married, and desperately unhappy. Jeff and
I had been engaged for six months and I knew that I’d made a major
mistake but I didn’t have any idea of what to do about it. The
wedding was planned for October and it was already late September.
Both families were terribly pleased with the match and I felt as if I
was on a train rushing toward a river crossing, knowing that the
bridge was out.
I’d grown up in a very sheltered environment, the youngest
, and only daughter, of a wealthy family. My parents were in
their 40s when I was born and my mother had given up hope of having a
daughter. So they doted on me and my three older brothers were very
protective. Jeff had taken over the role of protector soon after we
started dating during my junior (his senior) year.
Before you can understand how I felt, you need to know a
little more about me. When I was thirteen, I spent the summer at a
camp in Maine and had a wonderful time once I got over being homesick.
I developed a crush on one of the counselors, a college girl. She was
one of those big tan athletic girls that California seems to churn out
like hotcakes. At the time, I was a skinny little redheaded with
green eyes and lots of freckles. Diana, the counselor, realized how I
felt after she caught me spying on her when she was in the shower and
she sat me down and had a long talk with me. She told me my feelings
weren’t bad, just inappropriate at that time and in that place. The
talk didn’t make my crush go away, but it made me feel better about
myself.
When I got back home I surpressed my feelings about other
girls and conformed. After all, I was in junior high and conformity
was the name of the game. And conformity ruled my life through high
school and college. I met Jeff and fell in love, or convinced myself
that I had, and eventually we got engaged. Jeff treated me like a
prize that he’d won in a game, a game that I didn’t understand. I had
grown into quite a beauty, something that I was quite aware of but
took no special pride in – it was just a lucky combination of genes.
At twenty-one, I was tall, lithe, and athletic. I still had
the freckles, but they didn’t seem to be the plague they had been in
junior high. Other things drew attention away from them – my long
sleek legs, my high firm breasts, and my tight butt. I played soccer,
basketball, and softball in high school, but in college I concentrated
on basketball because several schools offered me athletic scholarships
in that sport. I would have preferred soccer, but I knew I wasn’t
good enough to play soccer at the college level.
In September, Jeff made plans to drive down to Long Island to
visit one of his frat brothers who had just gotten married. He asked
me to go along and I didn’t have an excuse so I went. It turned out
to be the best decision I ever made. Not that it seemed that way at
the time. We had a nice visit with Jeff’s friend and his wife. They
seemed happy and we had a good time. We stayed late and it was almost
midnight on Saturday when we finally started back. Jeff was hungry,
so we stopped at an all-night diner on the island.
There was a yellow bus in the parking lot along with a few
cars, but the place wasn’t too crowded. There was a girl’s high
school soccer team in the diner and a dozen other people scattered
among the booths and tables. The soccer team, according to snatches
of conversation I overheard, was on it’s way home from a tournament
and had been delayed because of problems with the bus.