Well, this is one of the more successful dinners I've cooked in a while, Diane thought to herself sarcastically.
To begin with, she'd burned the sauce for the chicken, so their dinner was going to be dry and bland at best.
The blouse she was hoping to wear had snagged on something in the laundry and came out with a gaping hole torn across the chest.
She had finally decided what else to wear and was halfway through changing when Nick had rung the doorbell. Flustered, she answered the door still doing up her top buttons.
What was worse was Nick's reaction. He definitely noticed, as his eyebrows shot up and his ears turned a deep shade of pink and that pretty much set the tone for the evening as one of awkwardness.
They had danced around each other, unsure of whether to greet one another with a hug, a peck on the cheek or even just a handshake. Nick seemed to be moving in for a hug, but had then tripped awkwardly on the doorstep and fallen forwards into Diane, pushing her against the wall.
"Sorry!" he apologised, gathering up a modicum of decorum before checking she was alright.
"Hush, it's fine," she waved him off.
The rest of their dinner proceeded in much the same fashion – stilted attempts at conversation, longing looks that rapidly turned into glances at the floor, the ceiling, anything but each other the moment the other person glanced their way.
And so it was with a heavy heart that Nick made his excuses and bid Diane farewell, pushing down the mounting sense of disappointment and missed opportunity.
As she saw him to the door, Nick turned once more, frozen on the threshold as if to say something.
Diane saw a thousand tiny expressions flicker over his face before one strangely akin to sadness took hold, he smiled ruefully and leaned in to kiss her softly on the cheek.
"I'm sorry tonight turned into such an awkward mess," he murmured. "Curse of the English, eh?"
"Oh, thank God, I thought it was just me!" Diane gasped, laughing a little louder than necessary out of sheer relief.
"It's just… everything was going wrong, from the dinner to my shirt," she continued, "and then when you got here I was worried I'd made a mess of things and I didn't know what to say, or whether you'd like any of it. I… I didn't know what you'd want," she finished lamely.
"What I want?" he asked.
She nodded mutely.
"What I want is not to have to go back to London in three days' time. I want there to be less than 5000 miles between us. I want to hear your voice every day and not just over the phone. I want to wake up next to you and for your smile to be the first thing that greets me. I want for the whole mess in Gander to have happened twenty years ago so we'd have more time together and I want to go back there and get married by the mayor after all and I just… I want… you, Diane. I want you."
As he finished, he let out a sigh and his shoulders visibly slumped, a weight clearly having just been removed from them.
Diane choked back a sob before throwing her arms around his neck and pulling him down into an embrace.
"Oh, Nick, that was beautiful!" she exclaimed before kissing him passionately.
His arms eagerly wrapped around her waist and he tilted her face up towards him, deepening the angle of the kiss.
They eagerly devoured each other, hands grasping and sliding over shoulders, chasing any kind of purchase that would bring them closer together. Nick blindly walked Diane backwards until she hit the wall with a thud and a giggle.
"Oof. Are you alright?" he checked, momentarily halting his affections to make sure Diane was alright.
"Never been better," she hummed, pressing gentle kisses to the delicate skin behind Nick's earlobe.
His pulse skyrocketed and as his thumb grazed the soft skin of her hip underneath her rucked up shirt, he murmured in Diane's ear:
"Now, what about you? What do you want?"
She pulled back, a seductive glint in her eye.
"Why don't you come upstairs and I'll show you," she said with a wink.