Joanie went back to school that Monday and the bruising around her eye had faded enough that she could cover it with makeup. There shouldn't have been any shame for her but it was a different time and I think more of it had to do with not wanting to tell the story a hundred times over.

Sam said that Stan had come into the station to talk about pressing charges but had decided against it when Sam told him that Mr. Cohen and Mr. Shapiro both would argue my case and that his history of attacking from cover would come into play and it would look like self defense. Sam also warned him against coming around Joanie anymore, told him if he couldn't figure out how to treat a woman then he maybe should stay single for a while.

I could see Sam sort of hemming and hawing about telling me all about that but he and I had a pretty good respect and I think he knew I would be fine. Actually I was better than fine. Knowing that he probably would stay away and that I didn't have to worry about getting locked up was great news.

Sam did something else that week that changed a lot of things in our world pretty drastic. He asked Emma to marry him. He got her a nice ring and when he brought her home from dinner one night he got down on one knee and the whole shebang. She said yes and didn't even think about it. But then I think she did a lot of thinking after the ring was on her hand. Sometimes I think people think too much and about things that don't need any thought at all. She brought me lunch one day at work and sat down to talk to me while I ate.

"Are you okay with me marrying Sam?" she asked like any part of it should be my decision.

"Sam's a good man," I said.

"He is," she said, "That's not what I'm asking."

"I think it's about time you got a bit of happiness for yourself and you've been the happiest I've ever seen you since Sam came along. It's not my choice Emma. I like Sam but the only thing I really care about is he treats you good and makes you happy."

"Would you walk me down the aisle, Jimmy?"

"I'd be proud to Emma, I really would."

I didn't hear much from Joanie that week but that was okay, we both needed to get our heads back in our studies. I was feeling less secure about my classes that semester. Over the summer I'd taken real basic classes to sort of get used to even being in school but I had to take some stuff that seemed really foreign to me. I remember taking biology that semester and I remember Sherry helping me study a couple of times. I was so scared going in because I just didn't know what to expect but it was actually really interesting and sort of fun too. There were so many things I hadn't even given myself a chance to like when I'd been younger. I wonder at how empty my life would have been without Joanie and if I would have even known what I was missing.

When I saw Joanie again, she didn't need makeup to cover the bruise on her eye anymore. It had healed and for the most part my hands had also. Later in the night when I helped her out of her blouse I saw that the bite marks had faded and probably weren't going to leave a scar. Somehow we were going to get through this without any physical reminders of it at all. If only the other scars left by Stan healed as quickly. Still she would bristle sometimes when I would touch her or if I held too tightly when we were making love. I understood why she was like that but it was real hard to not take that personally and I was tying myself in knots from holding back so much. There was usually such passion when we were together, what you might call abandon. But after Stan I always had to be thinking about if I was hurting her or scaring her or making her uncomfortable and it was taking a toll at times on our being together.

She was getting better though, I could tell. We spent a lot of time that weekend just reading and catching up on school work and it felt normal most of the time. She talked a little about Zaydeh but mostly her classes and music and Sherry and normal things and hell, even a sick grandparent isn't all that abnormal I guess. She still jumped if a neighbor slammed a door or something and I made the mistake of coming up behind her in the kitchen and putting my arms around her without warning her I was there. Got the wind knocked out of me for that. Really, if you looked past the haunted sort of look in her eyes and the erratic way she was in bed, she was damned near back to normal.

But there was that haunted look. The one that said she didn't feel safe anywhere and feared she may never again. I knew she didn't sleep well. There were bad dreams and while they weren't bad enough to wake her, they were enough to leave her exhausted in the mornings. That was a helpless feeling knowing how sad and scared and tired she was and there wasn't a thing I could do about it.

And when I say she was erratic in bed, I mean that too. I just never knew where I stood. Sometimes she was so frightened to be touched at all I almost thought to move to the couch. Other times she needed me holding her which was at least contact and still kept me in my place as her protector. Sometimes she wanted to make love but then would seem so unsure about it but she wouldn't let me stop. I did anyway one time and she just laid there and cried though the way she had been acting I think anything I did would have ended with her crying. Then there were the times when she was so desperate that she would nearly attack me. I have to admit that's kind of a turn on until I caught sight of her eyes and saw the need to replace her hurt and fear with something else. I really started to wonder if our life in the bedroom was always going to be so poisoned by what he did and the worst thing was that I didn't even know who to talk to about it. If we was married then I would have gone to Emma maybe but there's no way I could talk to her about sex that wasn't taking place in a marriage. She shot me enough evil looks about it as it was. If Lou wasn't so far away, I would've talked to her but it wasn't the sort of thing I could put in a letter and even more not the sort of conversation I could have on a long distance call with her bouncing little Bobby on her hip. The guys would all try to help, I knew but what any of them would know about how a woman feels about sex really probably fit in a thimble. I thought about asking Al but then he seemed really uncomfortable around Joanie once he found out so I think his solution was to tiptoe around her like she was made of glass and might break at too much noise or movement nearby. It wasn't how he handled much in his life but I don't think he'd ever dealt with anything like this. These days there's so much out there I could have typed "psychological effects of sexual assault" into the computer and learned more than any ten people could tell me. But we didn't have that stuff then. I know us old geezers talk about how much better and simpler things was back in the day but simpler don't mean better in every situation. I could have really used Google or something back then.

I figured out a solution even though I knew it wasn't a perfect one. I waited outside the building when I knew his shift would be over. I could have gone in and I know a job like his a scheduled shift meant little. He sometimes had to stay longer. But for maybe the first time in those few weeks, fate smiled on me and there he came just about five minutes past five.

"Sam?" I called to him and he turned toward me.

"Jimmy?" he sort of answered and asked at the same time. "What brings you down here? Is Emma alright?"

"She was as of when she brought me and Al some lunch today," I said and I sounded easier than I felt right about then. "I thought maybe we could grab a drink or bite to eat and maybe talk a little."

I looked down at my feet. I know that men talk to dads all the time and it shouldn't be a cause for embarrassment or anything but I didn't have a dad and I couldn't even really go to the man who'd been closest to one to me anyway. I know Emma was old enough to be my mom 'cause she told me though I wouldn't have guessed it otherwise. I think Sam might have been a little younger than Emma, not much but enough that he wasn't old enough to be my dad. But there I was asking it of him or at least for him to act big brother or trusted uncle to some street punk he didn't even hardly know. I know I didn't dress like a hood anymore but I still felt like one a lot.

"Sure," he said and put a hand on my shoulder and led me to his car. We found a place where we could grab a couple of beers and some burgers. We sat in a far back table and ordered and talked sports until the food came.

"I guess we should've had this talk sooner," he said to me and I was pretty confused.

"I don't know how you would have thought to," I said.

"I guess I'm out of practice," he said, "I should have come to you before I went to her."

"Sam," I said to him, "I get the feeling we're not talking about the same thing. Why don't you tell me what you think we should be talking about?"

"Emma," he said as if that explained anything which it didn't.

"What about Emma?"

"Well, I admit it's been a number of years since I did any courting and I guess that tells you how long because that's what we called it then. I remember when I asked Adele's daddy for her hand," he said and I was starting to get a glimmer of an idea. "I know Emma's a lady on her own but that doesn't mean she doesn't have gentlemen who look out for her. I probably ought to have come to you before I popped that question to her."

I laughed at him. I mean I really laughed.

"I won't lie," I said, "She's like a mom to me and I care about her and I probably came off like some over protective father when you first met her but you don't need anyone's permission to marry that woman but hers. If I need to tell you anything concerning Emma it's thanks. She's happy like I don't think she's been since her little boy died and I didn't know her then."

Sam took a drink and looked a little sheepish.

"Who's Adele?" I asked.

"You didn't think I was always the free and easy single guy you see before you, did you?" he asked, "Adele was my wife. She's dead."

"I'm sorry," I said.

"It was a lot of years ago," he said but something told me that no number of years was going to make it hurt less.

"How'd she die, if I'm not being too nosy?"

"She was in the wrong place at the wrong time," he said, "She went out to run some errands and happened to be at the bank when some men tried to rob it. We'd been married all of six months."

I just shook my head, I mean, what do you even say to something like that? He sighed and put the memories away to wherever he housed them most of the time.

"So what did you really want to talk about if it wasn't Emma?"

"Joanie," I said, "Well me and Joanie; it's kind of hard to talk about but there's things that just aren't the same anymore. It's scaring me 'cause I don't know if we can get back what we had or if we can, how to do it."

"I can see where that would be a delicate matter to talk to just anyone about."

"Yeah," I said, "I wasn't even sure about asking you but then you seemed to understand her so well, I still don't know and I'm sure a lot of folks would say we shouldn't be worrying about that anyway seeing as we're not married or nothing but, well, we are both adults."

"You don't have to defend yourself, Jimmy," he said, "I'm no judge and I've dated a bit since Adele."

It was hard at first to tell him what had been bothering me. If I'd been talking to Kid or Buck or Ike, it would have been easy to talk about this sort of thing but someone older like Sam, well, it seemed weird. Thing was those guys wouldn't have been able to help me like Sam could. He listened and eventually it got a lot easier to talk. I poured my heart out like I rarely did with anyone. When I finished he paused for a bit and signaled the waitress to bring another beer and then his attention turned to me.

"Talk to her," he said.

"Do what?"

"Talk," he repeated, "You know, that thing where you move your mouth and words come out. I know you can do it because you just talked to me for a half hour straight practically without breathing. And I'd recommend you not be in a glorified bar when you have this talk. That's fine enough for two men to talk but she'll feel more comfortable somewhere else."

"I can't talk to her about this," I said.

"So you can do these things with her but you can't talk about them?"

It did sound like a dumb excuse when he put it that way.

"But-" I started before he cut me off.

"Did it ever occur to you that she might want to talk too but might be too shy?" he asked me, "You know guys talk about this all a lot more than girls do. Women amongst themselves talk a little more but that poor girl probably doesn't have hardly anyone to confide in about this either. You think she's going to go home and talk to her mother? Her sister? She can't talk to Emma any more than you can and she'd feel even more awkward about it besides. Sherry's a nice girl and I'm sure they're close but unless Sherry's more experienced than I think she is, she's not going to be a great deal of help."

I hadn't even thought of how lonely Joanie must be. She did have Aaron but then he was a guy. A gay man is still a man and while some might be really good shopping buddies or good for a makeover or to share sundaes with when you're going through a breakup or something, they are still guys. No matter how good a friend Aaron was to her, he couldn't really know what she's going through. I couldn't either, of course but it was a matter between us and all the talking she might want to do and actually do with Aaron wasn't going to get that giant gap between she and I gone.

"Thanks Sam," I said.

A couple of days later I had a chance to spend some time with Joanie. My class that evening had been canceled so I called to see if she wanted to do something. I really put a lot of thought into where to take her. I wanted her to be comfortable and I wanted someplace that seemed neutral. I wanted privacy without her thinking that I was having the conversation as a sort of demand. An earlier and less understanding time in my life and I might have been making some demands. The most satisfying release I'd had over those few weeks, well since that first day in her apartment, had been alone in the shower. It's not at all how you imagine it when you think of having a girlfriend. I ruled out my apartment for being too easy to think I wanted to haul her off to bed and the roof of the garage for being too close to winter to be any sort of comfortable. Public places were out because I fully expected there to be tears from her and she wouldn't want to make a scene. I needed for her to feel safe in talking to me. I realized there would be a flaw with every place I thought of so finally I just drove around and figured as long as I was driving that she couldn't think I'd be trying to put moves on her and if she wanted me to stop the car anywhere, I could and we could talk.

"Are we actually going anywhere?" she asked and her voice was so close to being its normal playful tone that I almost chickened out and thought to live with the other problems but then I remembered the haunted look that never left her eyes and all the times she would cry out in her sleep and what Sam had said about her not having anyone to talk to and I thought I needed to talk even if it was hard and even if it backfired on me something awful because I had to give her the chance to open up to me, to feel safe with me again.

"Not just yet honey, " I said, "I wanted to talk and I couldn't think of a good place to have the conversation I think we need to have and I thought if I am busy driving then you can't mistake my meaning."

"Well that was cryptic, James," she said trying not to sound worried and I know she was because typically when someone you're in a relationship with says they want to talk, it's bad news.

"I don't even know how to start this talk except to say that if you are worried I have something bad to say, you don't need to be," I told her, "I love you and I always will."

"So, in what way could I mistake your meaning?" she asked.

"Well, I want to talk about how we are together, I mean, well, in bed and, you know," I sure was doing a great job of talking.

"I'm just still a little off," she said looking out the window of the car.

"I know," I said, "And I get that things are still hard for you but I want to better understand and I want to know how to help and I want to know why even when you look uncertain or scared you still want to do it."

"I want to go home," she said, "Now."

I tried to hide my dismay as I turned at the next intersection and headed west toward Ann Arbor.

"James," she said, "Did you forget where you live?"

"You meant my place?"

"Yes," she said but she didn't sound convincing. I pulled into the first parking lot I came to and stopped the car.

"Look me in the eye, please," I said, "I need to talk to you, I need to know what you're thinking and feeling, not be part of some challenge to prove to yourself you can still be tough. Do you really want to have this discussion at my place? I will take you wherever you really want to be but I need for you to feel safe."

"I never feel safe," she said softly, "Never, that's the worst part of it. I know it but I don't feel it. My head and my heart want to be at your apartment. Another part of me where the fear comes from doesn't but it's stupid and I don't want to listen to it anymore, not where you are concerned."

I put the car in gear and headed toward my place.

Well, here's one conversation that's going to be interesting to write...And yeah I just made up a name for Sam's dead wife...I was too lazy to look it up and Adele popped into my mind so whatever 1860's Sam's dead wife's name was, 1960's Sam was once married to a woman named Adele. That's why I'm the author...so I can make up random crap whenever I feel like it.

So the friend of mine who was in the accident is actually fine. She was badly bruised by the seatbelt (that I thank God she was wearing) and was checked at the hospital as a precaution but she is fine and already home again.

Not much else to say about this chapter except that I am so happy Emma and Sam are getting married because he's such a good man and she needs one of those. And this leads me to an uncomfortable place where I get to try to be very frank about emotions and how they affect actions without getting too explicit. I have my reasons for wanting to keep this to a PG-13 rating and this conversation is one where I could surely let it get out of those bounds. So we'll see how that goes...-J