"Hello, Mrs. Cooper? This is Penny in Pasadena, Sheldon's friend…did you know he was engaged?"

"Oh, my stars, I didn't think he would ever do such a thing but he did, bless his soul. The last time we spoke, well, he was borderline blasphemous and I doubt I will be seeing my son anytime soon. I stepped across a line with Shelly and there's no way to step back. If you see him, tell him his mother loves him and always will and I hope he will forgive me someday for what I did."

She would never 'fess up' to just what it was she did nor what the 'line' was that she'd crossed despite all Penny's wheedling and cajoling.

"It's not for me to say, Penny." That was the gist of their entire 30-minute conversation. Penny felt frustrated that she still had no answers. Could Sheldon really be engaged – to Priya Koothrapalli?

Across the hall in 4A there was a different conversation going on. Priya had expected Sheldon Cooper to explode in anger but instead he'd simply walked into his room and closed the door. She heard the 'snick' of the lock being engaged and then the crash of something large and very breakable against the wall or floor, she didn't know which. A few minutes later he walked back out, and the conversation began.

"Priya, this is not what I agreed to do and this is not going to happen. I have plans for the summer months that do not include getting married."

"You act like this is something I want, Sheldon. Believe me, the last thing I want is to get married. I have my career and a life all planned out. This – this is a disaster!"

"They are your parents so it's your problem. I agreed to 'pretend' to be your boyfriend but only to keep you from having to marry a senior citizen whom you only met once. There was nothing said about marriage."

'I knew I should have written up an agreement but she's a lawyer and this should have been anticipated somewhere in her lawyerly mind!'

"They will never believe that we have fallen out of love – not after that kiss. Sheldon, where did you – "

"You tricked me! First you distracted me with your hand on my leg and then you touched me intimately and then kissed me!" He was outraged at the violation of his person. He had been so careful, so distant, but she had tricked him and kissed him in front of her own parents! Her raw emotions and then the passion nearly was his undoing.

"You kissed me back! Don't deny it, Sheldon. You kissed me back!"

He had. She could still feel the soft fullness of his lips on hers and the gentle caress of his tongue on hers and the way it slipped into her mouth…she shook herself free from the distracting memory.

"I was trying to play the part of your fiancé, Priya. Was I expected to recoil in horror? I think that might have tipped our hand, don't you think? Your parents are quite astute and your mother! I think she and my Meemaw would be great friends, even with the age and cultural differences. I can see them on the front porch, in rocking chairs, sipping ice tea and plotting out our lives, cackling at some ingenious twist to their plot."

Priya could not stop the image of her mother, dressed in traditional Indian clothing, and Sheldon's grandmother, dressed like an 1880 frontier wife, sitting and sipping and plotting. Somehow it didn't seem all that strange.

"And what of your mother, Sheldon? Does she not want the best for you? Does she not 'suggest' choices and actions to you from time to time? She seems to be a determined woman."

"My mother is obsessed with religion."

"So what are we going to do?" She was at a loss. If she confessed her deceit she feared her parents reaction. Perhaps she should just go about her life and when Sheldon's name came up, just say that it didn't work out – too many cultural … no, that would simply add fuel to the arranged marriage fire.

"I know it goes against all your legal training, Priya, but you could try simply telling them the truth: you deceived them rather than marry a man you don't know and could never love. Just think of me when you tell them about why you couldn't possibly marry him. Pretend I was the one courting you. See? Easy as pie."

"Perhaps we could make excuses and delay. I simply cannot spend 3 months in India at some luxury villa on the most beautiful lake in all of India. I have my career to tend to. That's what I'll do. I'll tell them I can't marry yet because of commitments to my firm."

"Good, then it is settled. It's late and I have much to do tomorrow. Good night, Priya. I will shower and be out of your way within 30 minutes."


The next few weeks were full of routine. Sheldon 'excused' Priya from her duty of driving him to and from places and he tried to be anywhere else but in his own apartment when she might be there.

He doubled his use of hand sanitizer because he rode the bus.

Each 30-minute trip seemed like an eternity and he used the lab locker showers on more than one occasion when the air conditioning failed on the bus and he was forced to absorb the odor of countless filthy and odiferous bus passengers as they perspired in the miasma of the late spring heat.

Priya threw herself into her work and soon drew a choice assignment: she was to be 'of counsel' for an Indian manufacturer that was acquiring another company and it would mean spending at least 2 or 3 months in India, traveling between Delhi, Mumbai and the firm's London home office.

There had been 'discussions' about establishing a permanent presence in Mumbai and there were hints of a partnership in her future if the acquisition went well and a posting to their Indian headquarters in Delhi.


Sheldon was once again 'out for the evening' and her parents Skyped her with demands for travel schedules and the like. She had avoided their attempts to Skype simply because she knew the look on her face would never convince them of her words.

"And where is Dr. Cooper, Priya? I thought summer was the time he – "

"Yes, he is working on a research project, very hush-hush, Mummy. He won't even tell me what he's doing."

That was so true. When asked, he always responded with 'working on a publication' or 'cleaning up someone else's mess' but Rajesh had told her that they were working with Leslie Winkle on a classified government project. Something to do with lasers, magnets and 'force multipliers'.

He didn't even have time, apparently, for his friends. He hadn't seen Howard or Bernadette since the paintball tournament. He avoided Leonard like the plague, blaming him for his current state of affairs. He occasionally saw Penny in their building but had stopped going to the Cheesecake Factory since he detested eating alone in public.

Penny was always bright and cheerful. Perky was his best adjective for her. Nothing seemed to get her down for long. Her resilience was one of her best qualities. She tried striking up conversations whenever they ran into each other but he was either going somewhere or she was. She wasn't dating, just spending time with her friends and having a good time. She and Leonard were permanent history and she found it…liberating.


Sheldon was late getting back from a colleague's lab at CalTech. Priya was upset. She and her mother were in the midst of a horrible argument with each saying things they didn't mean but, as Sheldon once told her in his pedantic and irritating manner, 'You can't put toothpaste back in the tube, Priya'.

Now her mother pressed her for travel arrangements. She countered with information about her exciting new assignment. Her mother complained about her being ungrateful and how much her father had spent already and Priya had been almost to the point of admitting the entire farce when her father came into the room and interrupted her mother and said that Rajesh needed to speak with Priya immediately.

"Why is my brother calling you in India to give me a message to call him when he is less than a few miles away?" Her brother's mind worked in strange ways.

"He called because your cell phone is off and he knew you and your mother were conversing. There has been an accident…"

Her father didn't know any details just that Rajesh and Sheldon had been assisting a colleague in a lab when there had been an explosion.