twenty-nine-year-old, picture-perfect, finance manager for a Fortune 500 company. He had his masterâs in finance, and was considered to be one of the most promising executives in the field in New York. He was born and raised in Scarsdale, New York, in a very nice suburban neighborhood. Although it was basically a hop and a skip from Charleneâs neighborhood, hers was definitely the other side of the tracks. His parents were both professionals. His father was an accountant and his mother was in banking. Isaac went straight to college from high school. He took up accounting in college, pledged a fraternity and started on his path to success.
After working a couple of years he purchased a two-bedroom condo in Palisades, New York, overlooking the river, which was the hometown of an even higher class of folks. Although Isaac was one of the few of his kind there, he fit right in, especially with his 2007 burgundy Mazzerati with the peanut-colored leather interior parked out front. The inside of his condo looked just as good, if not better than any of his neighborsâ. He had dark gray micro fiber furniture in the living room, with black and white photos all over the place. His dining area was colorful with hues of burgundy, blue and green. The kitchen was stainless steel, accented with black. He had walnut furniture in his second bedroom, and marble floors and tabletops in his home office. There was even a mini NASDAQ ticker in the office. Isaac wasnât one for sloppy seconds; he definitely enjoyed the finer things in life.
The women from around Charleneâs way became envious of her as she started getting her life together and decided to go to college at age twenty-one. As trivial as it was, they would have smart remarks when they would see her dressed for her office job, wearing slacks and loafers or pumps. Sad part was that they werenât jealous because she had on nice clothes, but rather that she had a job to wear them to. Most of them did nothing all day, had a couple of kids and had no direction in life. Most of them had been her friends growing up, but Charlene didnât think they were still growing. They had made some smarter decisions than Charlene had, and some that werenât as smart. Charlene definitely almost got stuck in their same rut, but her not-so-smart decisions had become too much for her and she had to get out. Eventually she moved out of her parentsâ house, but thatâs when the girls really started to hate her and have a lot of negative stuff to say. It was the separation, it was the last step of growth beyond them and they couldnât take it. Their back turning only made it easier for her to exclude most of them from her life, and start a new one.
The last year that she lived at home with her parents before she got her own place was when Isaac started coming around. That had been interesting. The neighborhood girls were green-eyed and lurking without even trying to disguise it. They were trying to get all in his business, and trying to get close enough to throw themselves at him. They were hoping to catch his eye long enough to get some. It was easy for them to see that Isaac wasnât just one of the around-the-way guys that they were used to. They could tell by his clean-cut look and stylish clothes that he was something special. For most of the girls clocking, the car and money made him even more special. What was bothering them the most though, was that they were all wondering how Charlene did it, how she got a guy like him. Most of them assumed that it probably had a lot to do with Charleneâs looks. She was definitely considered one of the physically advantaged. They were always jealous of her caramel-brown complexion, her beautiful head of shoulder-length dark brown hair, her hazel-colored almond-shaped eyes, her full lips that Angelina Jolie would trade in for, and her body to die for. You would think she had a personal trainer. She was 5â6â,