Welcome to Gaia! ::

It felt like Zoe had done this a hundred times. With a name like Katsaros, there were certain expectations out of her behavior and her goals in life, especially when she was in her native city. She could have balked her duties as a responsible, loyal daughter - perhaps she should have, if she wanted to save herself from a pre-planned life - but here she was again.

The autumn breeze blew through the trees lining the sidewalk, rustling the leaves just beginning to sport their warm, fall tones. It wasn't quite cold enough for her breath to mist into the air, but she kept imagining she could just barely see it anyway. For her, it was too cold. Her long, thin hands had been stuffed into the olive green jacket she was sporting over her dress, detracting from the formality of the hip hugging ensemble with the look. As the heels clicked on the pavement, she stared down at her open toes and the perfect pedicure, huddled in on herself in an attempt to keep warm.

The restaurant wasn't far and, universe help her, she hoped the man wanted to drink. Not that she wouldn't, regardless.

She lifted her bright, fuschia eyes to stare ahead of her forcibly as she rounded the last corner between her car and the restaurant, noting the gentle wash of light from the front of the building that cut through the shadows settling beneath the setting sun. The pessimistic twenty-something had agreed to meet him, this Carson MacLeod, at the restaurant itself - just in case she had to make a quick getaway. That was always easier when she didn't let them pick her up.

"Pleased to meet you," she replied. Automatic, polite.

She let the waiter help her shrug out of her jacket and drape it across the back of her seat, then folded herself into it with all the grace a proper, upstanding socialite would have. One leg crossed over the other and she leaned back, watching Carson and trying to gather her first impression of him. Pleased, or irritated? Willing or not?

She made note of the wine, knew the ballpark of the price, and offered a pleased smile to the waiter as he turned and walked away. She had to wonder if that was an attempt to impress her.

Then Carson spoke - right to the point, admitting everything up front, and Zoe knew all that she needed to of the man. It wasn't an attempt to impress her, it was definitely a thinly veiled middle finger to his pops. That was an attitude she could respect.

"Not in the slightest," she laughed gently, tight and charming, "I basically do this for a living these days. Go on a date, please my father, prevent myself from being disowned. You'll only be letting me down if you turn out to be another boring politician's son, so just don't be a drag and we'll get through this fine." She leaned forward just a bit and opened her menu, offering him a smile.

"I promise to have very expensive tastes."

The laugh made her smile, as did his promise to be entertaining. There was a certain feeling of rebellion at meetings like these, even when she was doing exactly what she had been told. Enjoying herself while her father sat at home, quietly hoping to forge new connections via his daughter's theoretical marriage, and knowing all the while that his hopes would never be realized.

At least not this time, not this man.

"I love appetizers, they have a great lobster fondue." She certainly hoped Carson liked seafood - as she was hard pressed to eat anything else in the spectrum of protein and, though it was hard to judge a book by its cover sometimes, she suspected a fit man like himself liked his protein.

She glanced up at the waiter as he showed them the label for their approval, sliding the pre-set stem glass on her table toward him without a word and reverting her attention to Carson while it was poured.

"That's lucky, my younger sister has escaped to Europe for school. I'm sure once I'm properly married off and she comes home, she'll suffer some of the same treatment - but for now I get the full focus." Cassia had actually chosen to go to school somewhere that their mother could brag about, instead of slumming it at a public university nearby and spending her nights out on the town. She was already earning herself a better reputation, even being absent.

As much as she appreciated commiserating about their families, Zoe didn't want to delve too deeply into her problems, even if she seemed quite aloof.

"What does your girlfriend think of this?" She had to wonder if his father knew about the girl and thought she wasn't good enough - or if Carson hadn't told him at all.

Acting, hm? Zoe picked up her wine glass carefully and brought it to her lips, letting the scent of the fruity alcohol hit her before she took a delicate sip. It was very nice, and she smiled around the rim of the glass at him appreciatively. Tonight was going to be pleasant enough, and less awkward than most of these dates ended up.

"My mother would be horrified at the prospect of my becoming an actress, she was upset enough for the few years that I pursued music locally, nevermind that I never had the intention for anything bigger than a pub scene." She smiled and set her cup back down, leaning back comfortably into the back of the chair as she watched him over the tabletop. "She calls it my rebellious phase."

There was a certain humor in the way that Zoe told the story, playing it off as if her mother had never had a reason to be worried. She had, for all that she'd spent most of the time partying and drifting from partner to partner, but Zoe knew that the reasons Demetria had been horrified had much less to do with Zoe's actions than it did with her reputation.

Politics and paparazzi.

"Oh, good. We'll have to make sure we order something she likes, then. I'm always much more comfortable in these situations when I know I'm not going to have some girl chasing me down the street later." There was an amused gleam in her eyes that said it had probably happened before - even if other politician's sons were more inclined to listen to their parents, they still often had a side piece filling the void until then. They were often girls that couldn't change their man's fate any more than he could, than Zoe could. "Although I've gotten very good at running in heels, I must say."

An amused smile echoed Carson's pleasant laugh and she seemed to understand his need to escape his parents and the life they wanted for him - he has succeeded fairly well, she thought. Her mother hadn't said much about their family, except that they didn't live nearby.

She'd only ever gotten as far as a couple dozen miles.

"I actually play guitar too," she leaned forward a little now as they moved into a more comfortable topic. If he hadn't had a girlfriend, she thought this might not have been such a terrible date. "And piano, though I haven't practiced in years. That was mostly my mother's insistence, I don't like it nearly so much."

Her attention fell to her own menu and began to scan the selections, glancing past anything with red meat, which always tended to narrow down her options. Zoe thought of herself as a light eater, generally. Part of it was due to finickiness - though another part was her mother's constant critique of her physique.

"Ohm.." she paused her scan of the menu to think, rolling her eyes skyward as she recalled her life over the past couple of years. "Probably two dozen or more in the last couple of years. If I was wanting for money, all the free food would be nice, but I've got no real reason to be a gold digger." She smiled over the top of her menu. "This is probably the first one that hasn't been total torture. I can't even begin to tell you how irritating it is to listen to the same conversation over and over from different mouths. I was beginning to think politicians were just cloning their sons."

"I haven't had a good session in a long time, not since my band graduated from DCU and we all scattered to the winds." She made a fluttering motion with her fingers and swept it in a small, delicate arc, as if she were describing something more majestic than growing up and becoming adults with lives. "I'd be happy to get back to my roots, I do miss it."

There was a small pause and a small, wicked smile on her lips -

"Are you saying you don't have daddy issues, then?" Their current situation seemed to imply otherwise, but it had all been said in good fun. Before she could tease him any further, she was distracted by the waiter returning to table, though she offered the man a smile and closed the menu she had been browsing idly.

"I'd like the Mahi please, mid-rare." More seafood, true to her nature.

She relaxed into her chair again and gave Carson her own small nod, waiting for him to place his order, though from the corner of her eye she had noticed a second man heading toward them with their appetizers in hand. A well-run restaurant was always a breath of fresh air, especially since she had just begun to realize how hungry she actually was.

The joke earned him a laugh that ended with a small smirk, though she hid it behind another sip of her wine while she listened to him order enough food for two. At least his girlfriend was getting a free meal out of Carson's family drama.

She paused just long enough to give a polite thanks to the two men before they slipped back through the tables dotting the restaurant, then leaned forward to sticker a piece of crusty bread with one of the skewers that had been provided. As he talked about how busy he was, she nodded to let him know that she was listening, though her attention was on the steaming fondue.

"That's fine, my family keeps me pretty busy during the holidays anyway. I have to start helping my mom prepare for her New Year's gala, which is somehow a month long process." She brought the fondue to her mouth, just as he offered to teach her how the intricacies of Taylor Swift, and she almost choked around a laugh. Her hand was brought to her mouth out politeness as she tried to finish chewing the piece of bread, though she shot him a playful glare over the top of it.

"I think we can skip that lesson," she said, finally, after a long sip of water, "I don't need to play songs about hella good hair in minor key."

A small shrug rolled Zoe's shoulders as he defended Taylor Swift, however minorly. T-swift just didn't have the type of spirit Zoe connected to, at least artistically.

"Christmas is about the only holiday that my mother doesn't force us to share with the world." She knew how it felt every other day of the year to have everything from the cut of her hair to the hem on her skirt judged and criticized so that she presented the best vision of her family. But she did laugh at his joke, and forced a pleasant smile as she rolled the thin, metal poker between her fingertips.

"It's delicious," she offered, waving her free hand at the fondue to encourage him, though it dropped and reached thoughtfully for her wine glass after a moment.

"The New Year's gala is the biggest event of the year for my mom. It's a little like she's taking a whole night and turning it into one of those portraits - except its hundreds of people that she frets over." The glass was to her lips then and she took solace in the silence it bought her for a moment. She felt a little frazzled, underneath it all, as she recalled the last gala her mother had held - and all the words they had exchanged after. "I'd honestly just rather take a Christmas picture."