Chapter Three

"Moonpie, what a lovely surprise!," MeeMaw exclaimed, pulling Sheldon into a tight embrace. Penny winced, waiting for the inevitable pull-back, but it never came. Instead, Sheldon held the elderly woman tight, saying "I know, MeeMaw. It's been too long."

"And who is this lovely young lady?," MeeMaw asked delightedly, at last spotting Penny on the porch.

"MeeMaw, this is my friend and neighbour, Penny. Penny, this is my MeeMaw."

"It's a pleasure to meet you," Penny said, extending a hand.

"Oh, I'll have none of that!," MeeMaw replied, pulling Penny in for a tight squeeze of her own. "Do you know, you're the first girl my little Moonpie has ever brought home to see me?"

"You don't say?," Penny replied weakly.

MeeMaw laughed at that. "Well, come in, come in! You must be exhausted after such a long drive!"

MeeMaw led them into the large and surprisingly elegant house, the smell of dinner in the oven filling the air.

"Mmm, Mmm, Mmm. Is that your famous tuna casserole I smell?," Sheldon drawled, his Texan accent coming through more strongly than Penny had ever heard it before.

MeeMaw laughed again. "Of course, Moonpie! You always did have a keen sense of smell."

Sheldon beamed at the compliment, sitting in what Penny guessed to be his spot at MeeMaw's house.

"Won't be long now!," she called, bustling her way towards the back of the house and the warm smell of a home-cooked meal.

Penny stared wide-eyed at Sheldon a moment. "Sheldon," she began.

"Yes, Penny?," he drawled.

"You seem different, here," she observed.

"Nonsense!," he countered. "I'm the very same person I've always been."

"Would you kids like some pie?," MeeMaw called from the kitchen. "I have blueberry and plum in the freezer downstairs."

"Ooh, yummy! I'll go grab one!," Sheldon called back, racing from his seat.

"Same person my ass," Penny muttered, vowing to watch him closely for the rest of their stay.

"So, what brings you all the way home to Texas?," MeeMaw asked over dinner, a mischievous gleam in her eyes.

"Can't a boy visit his MeeMaw without any other reason?," Sheldon countered, taking another huge forkful of casserole.

"Not with a beautiful woman in tow," MeeMaw observed. "Is there something you'd like to tell me?"

Penny blushed furiously, but Sheldon merely smiled. "MeeMaw, I've already told you that Penny is a friend. As a matter of fact, until very recently, she was also dating my best friend and roommate, Leonard."

"And now you've run off together?," MeeMaw guessed, sighing wistfully. "I always knew my little Moonpie would be too much of a catch for any woman to resist for long."

Penny tried to set the record straight, but all she managed was a tiny squeak as she looked incredulously from MeeMaw to Sheldon and back again.

"No, no, MeeMaw," Sheldon corrected. "You see, Leonard is merely the latest in a long line of poor relationship decisions Penny has made. I was hoping you could help her understand what the problem is."

MeeMaw took Penny in for a moment. "You need to find yourself a good man, young lady," she said, her voice matter-of-fact. "If my Sheldon counts you among his friends, you must be something special, indeed. No more settling. You need to find someone who makes you happy, and is made happy by you in return."

"I thought I had," Penny replied carefully. "Leonard is a great guy. It's just, when he told me he loved me...I wasn't ready to say it back."

"Young lady, if there's one thing I've learned in all my years, it's that love is either there, or it isn't. You can't make yourself love someone simply because they love you, anymore than you can make someone love you just because you love them."

"So you think I couldn't tell him I love him because it isn't true?," she asked.

"Of course! Not every good man is the right man, my dear. Though I'd say you're on the right track now," she added, glancing meaningfully toward her grandson.

Sheldon beamed. "See, I told you. Brilliant," he said, beaming at his MeeMaw.

Penny nearly chocked on her meal.

Penny found herself alone on the back verandah after dinner, gazing out across the vast flatlands of rural Texas, the sky lit from one far edge to the other with the sinking orange sun. It was utterly breathtaking.

Sheldon and MeeMaw were inside, still happily gabbing about this and that while washing up from supper, and Penny couldn't help but marvel at the change in her neighbour since they'd arrived. Around MeeMaw, he was almost...normal.

Just as the sun sank below the horizon, making way for the first stars to appear, Sheldon stepped outside and quietly draped a blanket over her shoulders. "MeeMaw thought you might get cold," he explained softly, looking out over the familiar terrain.

"Thank you," she managed. The temperature was beginning to drop with the onset of night, although it was still a far cry from what she would usually consider to be cold.

They watched the night sky burst into life in silence, Penny amazed that so many stars could be seen all at once. Then she noticed that Sheldon was no longer looking at the sky, but at her.

"What is it, sweetie?," she asked, wondering if it was suddenly weirding him out, having her here.

"What do you see, when you look at the night sky?," he asked, surprising her not for the first time that day.

"Out here? It feels like I can see the whole universe," she confessed, looking back up into the sky.

He nodded, for once not correcting her observation to fit within his scientific ken. "You see that cluster over there?," he asked, pointing. Penny nodded. "Those stars died out before the dinosaurs, yet we can still see their light today."

"Really?," Penny breathed. Sheldon smiled.

"And over there," he pointed, "That star only appeared in our night sky four hundred and thirty-six years ago, though it is in fact tens of thousands of years old."

"How...?"

"The universe is so vast, entire star systems are born and die before their light can reach us."

"That's amazing," Penny said.

"You know, if you like stars, Koothrappali might be a good choice for you," Sheldon noted, breaking the moment.

"I'm not going to date Raj," Penny replied, shaking her head.

"Why not? He's a well-respected scientist in his field, and he's very open with his emotions."

"He can't speak to women," Penny pointed out.

"Talk is overrated," Sheldon replied.

"It would weird Leonard out if I dated someone else from the group."

"True. But it was no less strange for us when Leonard introduced you to the group in the first place."

"It was really that strange?," she asked softly.

"Penny, I don't know if you realize this, but you're very beautiful," he replied matter-of-factly, earning another blush from his companion. "And beautiful people don't generally associate with our kind. Yet you do so, willingly. You're an anomaly, Penny. An enigma not one of us has been able to decipher."

"Not even you?," she asked, just a touch skeptically.

"I've never been very good with people," he replied with a shrug.

Penny inched closer. "I think you're doing just fine," she said, offering him a genuine smile. His responding grin nearly made her weak at the knees, and it was all she could do to resist the urge to inch closer still, and see how human he could really be.