Joe's parents were terrifyingly well-organized. Seriously, inhumanly well-organized. By the time he bumped into his seventh-grade science teacher, he was beginning to suspect that they had arranged special access to the time portal from 'Star Trek' just so that they could follow every single one of his friends, acquaintances, classmates, teachers, tutors, relatives, and well-wishers from their briefest encounter with him all the way up through whenever they started planning this surprise party.
Which also spoke to the 'terrifyingly well-organized' part, he thought as he shook hands with an old friend he hadn't seen since he was sixteen. He broke the news to them that he was making partner, what...three weeks ago? And in that time, they apparently got out the word to over a hundred of his friends and relatives, got the guest house prepared for a reception, roped in Aunt Meryl's catering firm into what had to have been a brutally short-notice flurry of cooking, flung up loads of decorations, and all of it without even once tipping their hand that they were planning it all. It was absurd.
Thankfully, the initial flurry of hand-shaking and back-slapping had died down a bit. He'd endured seventeen jokes about free legal advice (which he'd be happy to provide, if the drummer from his college band ever needed to merge two multi-national corporations), six pinches on the cheek from aunts and great-aunts, some forty really nice compliments and a surprisingly large number of, "Well, I never would have thoughts..." that he was trying not to take the wrong way. Partner at thirty-six was pretty surprising, even to him. Joe was determined to enjoy it.
He had just taken advantage of the lull to grab a plateful of Aunt Meryl's Swedish meatballs (the foundation of a goddamn catering empire) when someone tapped him on the shoulder. He tried to hide his grimace as he turned around to see yet another person he hadn't seen in...in...oh crap. He had no idea at all who this woman was. Shit. He gave her a bright, cheerful smile that about seventy percent of the guests probably recognized as his cover for social panic, and used the natural pause from having his mouth full to try to place a name with the face.
She didn't look forgettable, certainly. She looked to be about five years older than him, her face given beautiful character by the tiny laugh lines around her sparkling green eyes. Her red hair had faded a little under long hours of sunlight (did she work outdoors? Did she garden a lot? Was she one of his sister's friends in a gardening club?) but still hung down in long, lazy curls that looked casual without appearing messy. Her skin had more of a dusting of freckles than a tan, and she wore an emerald green dress and necklace that matched her eyes perfectly.
Joe tried not to apply the same kind of detailed examination to her body, but she certainly had a very nice one. She had a curvy belly and heavy breasts, and wide swelling hips that seemed made to be held. It was the kind of a body that spoke to a life well-lived, and suggested that there was still plenty of life out there to be enjoyed. Joe was frankly astonished he didn't remember her at all.
That was getting harder to hide. He finished swallowing, and tried not to widen his smile uncomfortably far. "Hi!" he said, making a vague gesture with his plate to excuse his inability to shake hands or hug or kiss or whatever it was she expected him to do. "It's so good to see you? Enjoying the party?"
She gave him a Mona Lisa smile that barely touched the corners of her lips. "You don't remember me, do you?" she asked, looking more than a little amused at the thought.
"I..." Joe gave it one last, desperate try. One of the senior partners had told him, that very first day he joined the firm, that there was no skill more important for a lawyer than remembering people, and he'd worked hard ever since at recalling every person he'd ever met. Today had felt a bit like a quiz, and he was proud of his success rate. But this woman, she didn't ring a bell at all. "No, sorry. I got nothing." His grin became self-deprecating as he tried to pass it off as a joke. "I'm clearly going to need to see a doctor. If I can forget you, there's got to be something wrong with me."
She chuckled, and Joe got to see those lovely laugh lines in action. "And here, I was just thinking there was something very right with you." She took a sip of her wine, her eyes falling away from his flirtatiously for a moment before returning to give him a challenging stare. "My name's Maura, and I tutored you during your gap year. In this very house, in fact. You'd just come back from your trip to Europe, and your parents were a little worried that your freshman year was going to be rough on you. So they convinced you to get a tutor. I think you felt better about the decision when you saw me pull into the driveway."
Joe sorted with rueful laughter, hoping that he hadn't made too bad an impression on Maura back when he was an nineteen-year old horndog. "Sounds like something I might have said in my wild teenage years," he said, running his fingers through his sandy-brown hair in embarrassment. "I must not have been too much of a handful, or I'm pretty sure I'd be wearing that Cabernet."
Maura gave that comment a long, loud laugh. "No," she said, once she could finally speak again. "No, you were a very good student. Mind you, that was back when you still thought you were going to become a famous psychiatrist like your uncle. I'm sure you haven't used many of my lessons in years."
None of this was bringing back any memories, but even if Joe's skill at recollection had inexplicably curdled, he still knew how to socialize. He shook his head and replied, "You'd be surprised. I might have switched majors after my junior year, but ninety percent of being a lawyer is understanding what makes people tick anyway. I probably learned more useful lessons from you than I ever did from Professor Durwood."
She rolled her eyes in amusement. "Oh, honestly," she said. "False modesty aside, you were a much better student than I was a tutor. I was preoccupied with grad school, I had all sorts of other projects on my plate. I think you probably learned more about the things I was studying than you did about Psych 101."
Joe gave a tiny shrug. "I'll have to take your word for it," he said. "I'm very sorry, but I don't remember studying with you at all." He blushed a little, hating to make the admission, but it was true. The eight weeks between returning from Europe and heading off to Yale were a blur of parties and lazy summer afternoons, far from his most focused time of life. He was a little embarrassed to meet someone who only knew him as a lazy and distractable freshman-to-be.
"And that's just what I'm talking about," Maura replied, if anything even more amused. "It's been seventeen years, and you've remembered all your lessons-well, all my lessons, really-just perfectly. Why, I imagine that you'd still respond if I said, 'Emerald Gaze', wouldn't you?"
"I..." Joe blinked heavily, suddenly lost in thought. He hadn't heard that phrase in years, not since...not since before he went to college, he realized suddenly. It reminded him of warm, sunny days, sitting in his bedroom in the guest house and...and staring at something? Something beautiful, something deep. Deep enough to look into for hours, never quite seeing the bottom. He sighed, caught in a reverie that somehow never managed to come into focus.
"It certainly seems to be having an effect," Maura said, her voice deepening into a husky purr. "Let's try that again. Emerald Gaze. What is that doing to you, Joseph?" She reached up to her throat and brushed her fingers slightly against the gemstone in her necklace, drawing his attention to it like his eyes were magnetized to its depths. Depths, he thought, the word echoing strangely in the sudden stillness of his mind. The stone had depths. The more he stared at it, the deeper they went. The more he stared at it...
"...the deeper I go," he murmured, his voice unusually soft in his own ears. He was only half-listening to himself, though. The rest of his attention was on the emerald gemstone, and the way it seemed to have hidden facets within facets that drew his gaze in deeper and deeper. He felt like everything around the edge of his vision was fading, leaving him swimming in fathoms of endless green. It all felt so wonderfully familiar, like he was returning to a place that he had never wanted to leave in the first place. Joe let out another sigh, loving the way that his tension flew out of him with every breath.
"That's right, Joseph," Maura said, taking a step closer, pitching her voice just a bit softer and lower. "You see? You're a perfect student, and you remember all your lessons. You remember to forget, and you forget to remember, just like I told you that you would. Doesn't it feel nice to be a good student?"
Joe nodded, his head bobbing like a marionette and his eyes never leaving Maura's necklace. "Nice," he mumbled, his conversational skills deserting him in the face of all that green, pleasant warmth. It felt too much like effort to think of words, now. Maura could tell him what to say, what to think, and he could just agree. That was so much easier, he remembered now. That felt so much better. Maura would teach, and he would learn.
