The marriage pact

the long version

"Marci Thompson always knew what life would be like by her 30th birthday. A large but cozy suburban home shared with a charming husband and two brilliant children. A celebrated career as a writer, complete with mahogany shelves and a summer book tour... Instead, Marci lives alone in 480 square feet of converted motel space next to a punk rock band, hundreds of miles from her friends and family. She works in a temporary accounting assignment that has somehow stretched from two weeks into nine months... Thirty is not at all what it is cracked up to be. Then the reappearance of an old friend with whom she had made a drunken marriage pact ten years earlier opens a long-forgotten door "--