The Older Man Part I

Chapter 8

Just The Two of Us

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VINCENT'S POINT OF VIEW

I groaned as I awoke slowly from my restful nap. I shuffled a bit against the cool sheets underneath me before I tightened my arms around the pale-skinned beauty who rested her body against mine.

I buried my face in her raven hair and inhaled the scent of her perfume that resided in her locks.

She liked to spray a small amount of her perfume onto her hairbrush when she was getting ready for work in the morning. It was a muted rose fragrance with hints of vanilla and musk. The scent was luxurious yet subtle, just like her.

Rachel wasn't an intense woman. She was beautiful. Her hair was dark, luscious, and long. Her eyes were the color of freshly brewed coffee. Her lips were fairly average but the way her bottom lip pursed out added to her femininity. For a woman of 40 years old, her body was well kept and maintained. She frequently engaged in yoga and pilates on the weekends. Her love for fitness and health helped her retain the same physical aesthetic she possessed on our wedding day when she was only 22 years old.

The story of Rachel and I was a bit like Lady and the Tramp.

I came from a humble upbringing. My family wasn't rich. We had our difficult moments financially. My father made good money but a lot of his paycheck went to paying for the institution my aunt lived in. My aunt Jocelyn was my father's younger sister. She had grown ill in her twenties and since then, her health declined. She was very sick to the point of having to be hooked up to a machine 24/7. My father didn't want her to live in a government care facility so he paid a large amount of money for a nicer, privatized home. Because of this, my family knew what it was like to have lights and water turned off. We would spend many Illinois winters without any heat. Plus, being apart of a family with seven mouths to feed, I could see the toll it took on my parents to have to struggle. They were a bit hard on us, raising us to be strong-willed people with iron backbones, but they loved us more than anything. They only wanted us to succeed.

Rachel, on the other hand, came from the exact opposite life to mine. Her upbringing was a fairytale compared to most people. Her father was a surgeon and her mother was an accountant. She was very well off. Rachel only had one sibling - her older brother, Michael. She wasn't very close to him. In fact, the whole time we had been together, I think I'd only seen the two of them together two times for family events. Rachel was the homecoming queen type of girl who thought it was normal to have a pony as a pet. Having a pony is something kids only dream of but it was a reality for her. Her house was impressive with eight rooms. I remembered the first time I met her and went over to her house, I was gobsmacked. I couldn't believe how different her lifestyle was compared to mine.

She grew up in a gated community with fountains in the front yard while I grew up in a run-down neighborhood with routine police patrols. Somehow, we found love in each other. 

Her parents warned her about marrying me. They said I only liked her for her money which couldn't be further from the truth. We were both young and in love though. She put everything into me.

During the first few years of our marriage, she was already in the process of earning her degrees and close to fulfilling a residency in Northbrook while I had been in between various jobs before I finally began working full time as a project architect. She stayed loyal and supportive to me during a time when any other woman would have lost hope in her husband and given up on the possibility of him succeeding in a profession. That's what I admired about her.