This, Sheldon decided, was what they called a mixed signal.
"Here's your shirt," Amy said and handed it to him. "You can go now."
That meant that she wanted him to go.
On the other hand, when a woman took off all her clothes, that could be construed as an invitation for a sexual encounter. (Movies had taught him that.) Therefore, that might mean she wanted him to stay.
a.) That was terribly forward of her.
b.) He wanted to do what she wanted him to do, if he could figure out what that was.
c.) He did not want a sexual encounter with Amy. Probably.
d.) He hadn't breathed in quite a long time.
Sheldon drew a deep breath and numbly took his shirt.
So, to summarize, he did not know what she wanted, he did not know what he wanted, and he had no idea what to do. It was quite a lot of information to add up to so few conclusions. Nothing statistically significant. People stuff! This never happened in maths.
He needed more data. "Amy? What are you doing?"
Then, he recalled the evening before, and experimentally pressed his palm to her back, between her shoulder blades. You could learn a lot by touching, apparently. Amy didn't say anything, but he could feel her flex, very slightly, sort of like a cat. He couldn't have quantified it, but it did not mean 'go away.'
She sighed. "I suppose I just want to make things..." she choked back a short laugh, "...difficult for you."
What was funny about 'difficult'? Still, all right - the jilted woman, the vengeful ex. Fair enough. He tried to remember if he had ever given her anything that might suffer from being flung out of a window in the throes of an emotional outburst.
"You broke up with me," he pointed out, and traced her spine to the small of her back. "That's quite difficult."
"Mm. I should have been clearer about that," she said. Her voice sounded funny. Her skin was smooth and warm, and the geometry of her back, the curves and planes of it, the way it all connected together, was just fascinating. He wished she would turn around and he could see her expression.
The blood rushed to Sheldon's cheeks in a hot, vicious wave. Her face, just her face.
He cleared his throat. "There's a form. Appendix C in the relationship agreement," he said.
Then again, there were a lot of things in the relationship agreement, and there was definitely no stroking of anyone's back (save in the case of the Heimleich maneuver or if either party needed to be nursed back to health after contracting malaria,) yet here he was, with both hands on her bare shoulders, following through on the neck massage he had promised.
"I'll email it," Amy said. Then, "but don't stop."
Mixed signals. She wanted to break up but she didn't want to stop this. Or, she knew he didn't like it and so was trying to make the breakup go faster. Only he would need to go and she wanted him to stay, unless she did want him to go. But, given the parameters of relationship agreement-
Amy made a sound somewhere between a sigh and a purr, and leaned back against him, and Sheldon found himself in the last place he had ever expected to be. He was, he firmly believed, better prepared to be transported to the surface of a distant exoplanet or to fend off an attack by a ravenous zombie hoard, than he was to deal with this here situation of a naked girl in his arms.
Jesus Christ, what was he supposed to do with his hands?
"It wasn't as complicated as I thought," he blurted out.
"What wasn't?" Amy asked.
"Yesterday evening, in the mainframe lab. The you-know-what."
"I don't know what," she said, altogether too brightly, from somewhere under his chin, snuggling more firmly against him.
Was she going to make him say it? "The KISSING. If you must know. I assumed a level of complexity on the order of badminton or cartwheels, but it was more like...frisbee, or tying shoelaces."
Amy looked up at him over her shoulder. "Sheldon, kissing is a reflexive instinct, prevalent in many mammel species. Everyone knows how to kiss."
Biology stuff. Yeah, right. Like you could rely on that. "You can't know that. Have you kissed everyone?"
"Almost everyone has kissed someone," she paused. "Including you."
"I didn't know," he said. Sheldon had long since simply assumed that that bit just didn't exist in him. Gene expression or brain structure or hormonal balance, that did the handshakes and the hugs and the kisses and all the things that seemed to take up so much of everyone else's time. It didn't exist, or was broken, or had gotten helpfully lost at some point along the way. It was odd to discover that it was there after all, and maybe not as atrophied as all that. Odd, and not entirely unpleasant. "I didn't know I could do that."
Amy twisted around, slid her arms around his neck and kissed him. It wasn't bad. Easier than the first time, too, and with his eyes closed and concentrating on Amy's lips, it was easier to ignore that whole business with the nakedness. His hands found someplace to go without being told, in her hair and around her waist. Maybe kissing was even easier than shoelaces.
