Penny has a craving for dumplings, but she ends up with chicken parmesan because they don't want to get involved in Sheldon's tirade against the Szechuan Palace.
She expects light, fun, first date conversation, but ends up with the entire history of Leonard Hofstadter's academic career as well as a rundown of his current work at CalTech. After about seven minutes, it all sounds like "physics physics blah blah blah" to her.
He pays for dinner and she offers to buy dessert at her favorite yogurt place. But just a few feet down the street, her phone starts ringing.
"I'm sorry, I really need to take this. It's my agent."
Leonard nods and stammers, "It's – it's fine. Go ahead."
That's the call that changes everything. It only takes four words for Penny to go from Cheesecake Factory waitress to movie star.
All she can talk about on the way home is the movie and how she read the script and was ready to kill to get the part if she needed to. She goes on about the audition and how deep down she felt like she nailed it, but sometimes you just don't know what the director thinks.
By the time they reach the fourth floor, she's talked so much she's practically out of breath and Leonard stands outside her door with a look of expectation on his face.
But she can't think about that. She refuses to. Her life is about to change and though it wasn't the worst date ever, she doesn't have time to think about where Leonard is going to fit in to all of that. Not yet anyway.
So she says goodnight with a hug and even though she can tell he's faking it, he smiles and says good night before he heads in to his own apartment.
The next couple weeks are a blur of script readings, costume fittings, meetings, contracts and travel plans. She pops in to 4A to chat with the guys a few times, but most of her time is taken up by working her last two weeks at her waitressing job and preparing to head to Canada for almost three months.
The role is the female lead in a quirky indie drama. Her co-star is a name she recognizes but when she tells her mom she just says, "The little kid from 3rd Rock from the Sun, but he's all grown up now."
The pay isn't great, but her boss at the Cheesecake Factory says she can always come back if she needs to. Penny works her last day on a Tuesday and delivers Sheldon the last cheeseburger she'll ever deliver him. There's no way she's going back to that, she tells herself.
The next morning, Leonard takes her to the airport and before he leaves her at check-in, he stops and stares at her uneasily.
"Penny – about us –"
"I know. This happened at a weird time and I'm sorry for that. Our date was fine but –"
They both know what the words mean as soon as they leave her mouth. Fine. Not great, not amazing, just fine.
Leonard sighs and she wants to give him a better apology than she has time for, but Flight 327 to Vancouver is waiting.
"Leonard, what I'm about to do is the most important thing I've ever done so I can't even think about anything else right now. When I get back –"
"I understand. Really. I do."
Penny smiles and gives him a quick hug before hoisting her carry-on bag to her shoulder and walking away. She never looks back.
She's curled up in her bed on a chilly Vancouver night reading Facebook on her phone after a very long day of work when she sees his update.
Leonard Hofstadter is now in a relationship with Stephanie Barnett.
Penny taps out a quick response on her phone's keyboard.
Congrats Leonard! I'm happy for you! Can't wait to meet her!
When she returns to Pasadena, the first place she goes is to 4A to get her mail. When she knocks, it's Sheldon that answers the door.
"Hey Sheldon, look who's back!"
Sheldon looks around her as if he's expecting someone besides Penny to be there. "I see you. Is there someone else that has returned from an absence?"
"Er, no, just me."
"So you were just stating the obvious then?"
Penny nods and looks past him but doesn't see Leonard anywhere. Seeing how they left things and that he never called or texted while she was gone, that's probably a good thing. Besides, he's with Stephanie now.
"You have my mail?"
Sheldon grabs a small box off the nearby bookshelf and hands it across the threshold to her. "Of course. We had all of your important mail forwarded to you in Canada. But this is the rest. I sorted it by date, and then by alphabetical order of the state they were mailed from."
"Wow. That's impressive." She gives a cursory glance to the first few envelopes and then nervously asks, "So, uhm – is Leonard here?"
"No, Leonard is out with Dr. Stephanie Barnett."
"So that's still going on?"
"Yes. In fact, I quite like her. I find she's much more suited to Leonard than you were."
From Sheldon, that could have either been an insult or just the flat out truth. Maybe she wasn't suited to be anything more than Leonard's friend and neighbor.
"Well, always a pleasure to talk to you, Sheldon."
Penny gives him a grin and shuts the door before heading back to her own apartment. She waits to feel a familiar pit in her stomach, but there's nothing there. Not regret or jealousy of Leonard's new girlfriend. Nothing at all.
Winter and Spring come and go. Her film gets finished and the producers start looking for distribution, but now that she's got a major film role to her credit, she starts booking jobs. Actual jobs. Nothing major, just some TV roles, but it pays the bills well enough. She plays a kidnap victim on Criminal Minds, a murderous secretary on Bones, and ironically enough, a waitress on Desperate Housewives. She's practiced for that role plenty. The only time she sees the inside of a Cheesecake Factory is when the boys invite her to join them on Tuesday nights.
Her friendship with Sheldon actually becomes a friendship. Of course, it's filled with a lot of arguing and one hearty prank war, but they actually become real friends. Her friendship with Leonard is unchanging as ever and if he's harboring feelings for her, he doesn't show it. Not even when he breaks up with Stephanie.
It's Sheldon who tells her that they're going to the Arctic Circle for three months, not Leonard. And when she says goodbye to him, it's as friends, friends who promise to e-mail all the time.
So they keep in touch, sharing tidbits of their lives when they can. It's nice.
By the time the guys return from their expedition, Penny's booked another movie role, one that shoots in South Carolina for ten weeks.
She moves out of the building when she gets back in January right after a trip to Sundance. She goes from seeing Sheldon and Leonard several times a week to once a week. Within the year, she's lucky if she sees them once or twice a month.
It's not that she doesn't try. She's just got too much on her plate these days. Her first film gets picked up by a distributor at Sundance and in between acting jobs, she's doing press for the theatrical release.
Penny invites all the boys to her first premiere and though she only gets to talk them for a few minutes, when she gets home there's a bouquet of flowers from all of them with a card. Leonard's inscription reads "Congratulations! I always knew you could do whatever you wanted." Sheldon writes, "I'm not sure why sending flowers that will die in a few days is indicative of how any us feel about your success. It seems to be just another symbol that I do not understand. However, I will extend my congratulations on reaching your goals."
Typical.
She doesn't get an Oscar. Not yet. Her co-star gets a Golden Globe nomination and Penny gets nominated for an Independent Spirit Award. She loses, but sitting under that big white tent surrounded by her fellow actors goes directly in the win column for her.
After that, it's all uphill. She works so much that she only takes time off at Christmas to see her family in Nebraska. Friendships get put aside, aside from occasional text messages or notes on her Facebook wall.
The more successes she has, the more focused and driven she becomes. Her manager urges her to take vacations, but she can't take more than four days off without feeling like she's missing out on something.
Her personal life becomes filled with friends she meets at work and she dates a few actors and directors but none of them last too long. Maintaining a relationship when she was a waitress was hard enough, but when you're constantly traveling, it's near impossible.
Years pass, and before she even realizes it, she's turned thirty. Her manager shows up at her house near the beach on the afternoon of her birthday with a bottle of champagne.
"You look exhausted," is the first words out of her mouth.
"I feel really old."
"Thirty isn't old. It's just the beginning."
Penny smiles and lets her in, leading her to a table on her patio that overlooks the beach. Evelyn pulls out her iPad while Penny pours the champagne into glasses. When they're settled in, she pushes the iPad towards Penny.
"What is this? A bad review. I can handle bad reviews, but not on my birthday. Please."
"Not a bad review. Just the latest Oscar odds."
Penny frowns and shakes her head, refusing to look at the screen. "I don't want to know."
Evelyn pushes the iPad even closer to her. "You're pretty much a lock. You're going to get the nomination. Every reporter in this industry knows it. And so do you…"
She sighs and takes a sip of the champagne before speaking again. "It's just – to tell you the truth – there was a time when I didn't think I was very good at this. No one, including me, thought I would ever make it as an actress. I thought I'd be living in my little apartment in Pasadena and waitressing until I was 40."
"So? None of that happened. Maybe you didn't know what you were doing when you got started in this business, but you know now. Celebrate these victories… take a damn vacation or something. Go see some friends, preferably ones that aren't actors, get out of L.A. Then come back and get that Oscar. You have a few weeks off before you have to be back for Awards season, so –"
"Ev, I don't know –"
Evelyn grabbed her iPad and immediately opened her calendar. "Nope, I won't hear it. You've worked for almost seven years straight without a break. I'm going to talk to Maddy and we're not going to book you for anything, no events or talk shows or anything else for the next three weeks. So you either stay here and catch up on your DVR or you get your ass somewhere warm."
Penny laughed and held out her glass of champagne to toast with Evelyn. "To somewhere warm then."
That evening before she heads out to her birthday dinner, she books two weeks in Belize with a couple days to get ready before she goes. It's the first vacation that doesn't include some element of work in it that she's taken since before she became a working actress.
She spends the next morning loading her Kindle and iPod as she plans to lie on the beach and catch up on reading for at least the first few days. Penny even promises Evelyn and Maddy, her agent, that she won't bring any of the scripts on her desk with her.
By lunchtime, she's at the mall after having the terrifying realization that she most of her clothes are for going to the gym or going to movie premieres and appearing on talk shows. That will just not do.
She hides under sunglasses and a ballcap and in a few hours she's already loaded down with bags of vacation wear - new bikini, new shoes and sundresses, the works. There is a comic book store on the way back to her car and she can't help but stop and stare through the window for a minute.
Penny has never cared about comics, but she can't see a store without thinking of that brief time she spent in 4B, hanging out with her favorite geeks all the time. That's why she thinks she's losing her mind when she sees a familiar face staring at her through the window.
She doesn't even hesitate to head inside and she drops her bags as she throws her arms around him for a brief but meaningful hug.
"Well, Leonard Hofstadter, of all the places in the world…"
He looks at her, eyebrows raised in surprise, "Come on, of all the places you'd expect to find me, a comic book store would be near the top of the list."
"A comic book store in Los Angeles though? Last I heard from you, you were living and teaching in Boston. What brings you back here?"
He adjusts his glasses and says, "I'm guest lecturing. At both UCLA and CalTech. Visiting Howard too. Then back to Boston for a few days, and then Switzerland."
"Switzerland? To see Sheldon?"
"Yeah. He wants to show us around his big secret project at CERN. Of course, we're using it as an excuse to have a vacation. Howard and his new girlfriend are coming, Raj and his wife are flying in from India."
Penny feels her mouth go a little bit dry. She had only lived across the hall from him for two years, half of which either she or they had been out of town during. They were friends, but she hadn't been there long enough to have the kind of friendships that you maintain for years after you move away. If it hadn't been for social networking on the internet, she wouldn't know where any of them were now/
"Wow. That's great. And Mrs. Hofstadter? How is she?"
"Leslie is good. She refused to take an extended maternity leave because she didn't want to lose a grant she'd be working on. She's coming too, but we're leaving the baby with her mom."
Penny grins as she counters with, "Not your mom?"
Leonard laughs and shakes his head emphatically. "You met my mom once. There's no way."
"I'm guessing she hasn't changed in seven years then."
"Not one bit." He looks down at the floor for a moment and when his eyes meet hers again, he seems unsure. "You know, you could come to Switzerland. I'm sure you're busy. You always seem to be but, if you're not –"
"I don't know. It might be weird. I never call you guys and then I suddenly show up at your big reunion thingy?"
"Penny… we never called you either."
Penny sighs softly knowing that he's right. Friendship goes both ways and neither of them tried that hard to keep it going. They never really had anything in common to begin with and once her life did a total 180, they had even less common ground.
But she misses him. She misses all of them really. Friends who liked her before she was on the cover of magazines, people who liked her regardless of her fame or success. She was on the brink of reaching her ultimate goal, an Oscar, but what was she going to have after that – more of the same.
"I actually have a few weeks off, but I don't know. It might be weird."
"Just think about it. Everyone would love to see you. And you could go skiing and –"
"Okay. I'll think about it. I swear. But on one condition. I promise to keep in touch better and make an effort, if you guys do too. You know, after the trip is over."
Leonard nods enthusiastically and quickly scrambles to dig his phone out of his messenger bag. "Here. Put your new number in my phone and I'll text you tonight with all the details."
She does as he asks and when she hands the phone back to him, it suddenly feels like it is 2007 all over again and they're meeting for the first time.
"Leonard –"
"You know, sometimes I wonder, if you hadn't got that phone call on our first date, if you hadn't gotten that movie in Canada, what could have happened –"
Penny shrugs and gives him a smile. "I guess we will never know."
He tucks his phone away and smiles back at her. "I know. I just think about it sometimes."
"Truthfully? So do I. But it seems like we ended up where we were supposed to be anyway, right?"
"Yeah. I suppose so."
She picks up her bags and tilts her head towards the door. "I have to go meet my agent for dinner, but don't forget to text me that info, okay?"
Leonard looks at her like he thinks she has no intentions of going to Switzerland but he continues smiling anyway. "I will. Good to see you, Penny."
She gives him one last look before she heads out to the sidewalk again. An impromptu trip to Switzerland to see people she hasn't seen for years isn't really like her. It's impulsive and her days of being impulsive ended when she realized she could actually make a career out of this acting thing.
But she still stops at a store and looks at new ski boots before she heads back to her car.
That night she stares at the text message from Leonard on her phone. It contains travel dates along with the name of their hotel in Switzerland. Her finger hovers over the delete button for what feels like an hour.
She thinks of Halo night and Thai food and the one time they played paintball together, but most of all she thinks about what might have been if she had stuck around longer.
So Penny moves her hand to her laptop keyboard and starts typing. Her vacation quickly changes from two weeks in Belize to one week in Belize and a week in Switzerland.
It's a start anyway.