The Office Party

Part 41

Diana and I walk to the restaurant, because it's not far and the night is pleasantly warm. I slip my arm through hers and like the way my dress moves over my skin where her body brushes mine as we walk. It feels nice to be strolling along with Diana, going out together for the evening as a couple, enjoying the sense of stability that's creeping into our relationship.

Diana has chosen well, as far as the restaurant goes: it's a small, quiet, subtly sophisticated place with a small, quiet, pretty courtyard at the back, onto which our table looks out. It's one of her favourites, I know – she's on first-name terms with the proprietor, who takes her through personally, to show her where we'll be seated – and she has talked now and then of bringing me here before. That would have been nice, but it's nice to be with her here on this night too. And I don't mind at all that we're sharing our first time here together with a few others, even others from the office. I think Diana has been looking forward to this evening for a while, so it's lovely to be privileged enough to share it with her.

We've got there first, despite her impatience with how long it took me to get ready, and after Diana's satisfied herself about the table, we hover near the small bar counter to wait for the others. Diana nudges me to sit on one of the stools there. She squeezes in to stand close to me as I pull myself up onto the seat and cross my legs, so close that her hip presses my leg. The movement brushes the hem of my dress up a little, and the brush of the soft material of her trousers on my bare leg gives me a little tingly thrill. As she leans an elbow on the bar to order us both a drink and turns her body into me, she hooks the thumb of her near hand into her pocket. Her fingers brush my knee and push at the hem of my dress, and she automatically rubs my bare knee gently for a moment or two with her knuckles. The casual, unthinking affection in the gesture (as well as the fleeting sexiness of it) thrills me more than anything else, and as I watch her interact comfortably with the staff I realise again that I could never be as happy as I am when I'm by her side. Diana fulfills me in so many different ways, and gives my life sense and purpose in a way no-one else has ever been able to do.

The others arrive within a few minutes of each other and we're led through to where we'll be eating. By some unspoken mutual agreement, Diana and I manage to arrange it so we sit apart from each other and both spend most of the evening talking to other people – which I know we both feel is as it should be. After all, it is a work event really, and it is principally Diana's gesture of gratitude to people from the office whom she likes, respects and wants to thank for a job well done. It's not the time or place to indulge in public displays of being a happy couple, even though, as it happens, it's unlikely any of the others would mind particularly.

At one point I have a few minutes to sit back quietly and watch her, and I realise that it's been a little while since I've seen her more normal side. I realise I've got used to being one of the few to see her as someone outside work: as a person rather than a company executive, as a friend, and primarily as my lover. I think I'm probably the only person who sees more of her in private than at work. And even when we do socialise with others from the office, she's still different from how she is when it's just the two of us. I feel a moment of delicious disconnection where the coolly businesslike and always slightly distant Public Diana I was initially attracted to (and so frustrated by) collides with the tenderly affectionate Private Diana I've come to know (and fall in love with.) Not that she isn't considerate and pleasant at work, when she needs to be, or that she can't be a self-centred bitch at home sometimes – but I realise with a rush that I'm lucky to know her so well, to see these different sides of her, to be the person she seems to feel closest to and most comfortable with. I realise I really do love her.

Once I realise this, I know it is only a matter of time before I actually say the words, and my whole body tingles with happiness. I don't want to alarm her, but I do want to find some way of saying something. I wonder if there will be a moment later, when we're alone again, when I can tell Diana how much my world now revolves around her, how much I love the way she fills my thoughts and dreams, fulfills me, makes me whole, and how much she is the focus of my life.