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Chapter Six: Imogen, Present Day
"Will you please stop pacing? You're stressing me out."
"You're stressed?" I said to Leo, who lay on our sofa with his eyes shut, looking anything but stressed. "I'm sorry that my sex life, love life and work life hanging in the balance is an inconvenience to you."
Leo scoffed. "Yeah, because having a hot guy beg to take you on a date is a real nuisance."
I didn't rise to his sarcastic comment, knowing the bickering would go back and forth relentlessly if I pursued it. Leo had been a close friend for years—a partner in all senses of the word at various points during our lives. I'd kept him in the loop during my time in Greece, I'd cried on his shoulder when I got back from Greece, and now I moaned his ear off about the potential consequences of revisiting Greece.
Other friends might remind me of the hurt I'd suffered over the past few weeks, warning me away from entertaining Jason's offer of a date.
Not Leo.
"If it really was as good as you say, then surely you owe it to yourself to have this date?" he'd said as we discussed it over dinner.
"It's not a date. It's dinner to clear the air. And besides, he's my boss."
"He was your fuck buddy long before he was your boss, Midge. You need to get this out of your system. Even if nothing comes of it, then at least you've got closure."
Leo was right, but then he'd always had an infuriating knack for being logical in times of crisis. Nothing fazed him.
When I'd walked in on him with another guy, he'd just told me to either get in the bed or get out of the room.
When we'd failed a dance exam that we'd spent months training for, I'd holed myself up in my room. Leo had simply said we hadn't worked hard enough and that the better couple had won.
When he'd caught the girl he'd been seeing cosied up with one of our mutual friends on Instagram, he'd shrugged it off and said there was no point wasting his emotions on a person who had so little regard for them.
His even-headed approach to life's little dramas had inspired me over the years. It would be easy to take the stubborn path and refuse his advice. It would also be foolish.
And that's how I found myself pacing up and down our living room, having decided to meet Jason after all.
*
Jason had chosen an independent, family-run restaurant, hidden down a street I'd never heard of, in a part of London I'd never visited. It had no website, not even a Facebook page. The TripAdvisor reviews raved about the Greek food, though.
I wanted to avoid being the first to arrive, having to sit there and wait for him to grace me with his presence, as if to remind me that he was a busy man in real life who didn't have time for girls like me.
