Penny pulled up in front of the radio station and sat in her car in the parking lot. She was supposed to go in early. After her big blow-up with her co-host Jake, she had immediately emailed her manager and requested a meeting. She was sure he would be sympathetic; after all, he obviously knew when he introduced them that Jake was trouble. Just a few days ago, she had hoped that she could transfer to another show. Maybe another radio personality could use a partner.

That had all been before this morning. Her day had started out like any other day. She had woken up to bright morning sunlight streaming in through the mullioned windows in their bedroom. Stumbling sleepily out of bed, she had put on a robe and gone out to say good morning to her boyfriend and son. After a few minutes with them, she grabbed the coffee that Sheldon always had waiting for her on the kitchen counter, two sugars, no cream, just like she liked it. Then she headed back to the bathroom to get ready. It was while she was showering that she had found it: a lump, hard as a rock, low in her abdomen. It didn't move when she pushed on it, and suddenly, her exhaustion and loss of appetite made sense to her. Cancer. She had cancer. Her mother's aunt had died of stomach cancer when she was a teen. She hadn't known Aunt Carol very well, but she had vivid memories of visiting her in the
hospital. The woman's eyes had been dull and sunken, her skin like parchment paper, and most of her hair had fallen out from the chemotherapy. Penny had never wanted to get away so badly. She knew her aunt was going to die; she was just waiting, suffering, until the inevitable end. And now Penny was convinced she had the same thing. She should have listened to Sheldon when he told her to see a doctor, but that experience with her aunt had scarred her for life long before their abduction. She never
went to see a doctor unless it was absolutely necessary, like that time she had dislocated her shoulder. How long had she ignored her symptoms? Long enough… maybe too long. She had called and made an appointment with a doctor, but she feared it might be too late.

The rest of the morning, she wandered around in a daze. Took Stephen to the park and pushed him on the swings and wondered how the hell she was ever going to tell Sheldon. He would… she didn't know what he would do, exactly, but she knew it wouldn't be pretty. He had weathered a lot of change in the past couple of years, but they had always handled it together. She looked down at her son, who had
fallen asleep in the stroller as they walked back home from the park, and the tears started to fall. How could her little baby grow up without his mother? As she approached the apartment, she wiped the tears off of her face with the backs of her hands and tried to compose herself. Fortunately, Sheldon was still terrible at reading facial expressions. All she had to do was avoid him until she could get to the bathroom and hold a cold washcloth on her eyes to get rid of the redness. She knew she would have to tell him, but she couldn't, not yet.

The meeting she had scheduled with Dale actually worked in her favor. She used it as an excuse to skip out on lunch with her two "boys". Now, as she walked into the low brick building, she wondered if she should just tell Dale she was quitting. She stopped, blinking, and then straightened her shoulders. What was she thinking? She was Penny, the woman who had been a Junior Rodeo champ, the one who struck out for California with just a dream and a suitcase. She had survived an alien abduction, helped her dearest friend heal from his traumatic past, and coped when a baby was literally dumped into her arms. A rude, mouthy co-star was nothing. And cancer… she was going to fight that too, fight to stay with the man she loved and their son. So when she was ushered into Dale's office by his assistant, she felt like she was almost ready to burst with a barely leashed energy.

"Come on in, Penny." Dale greeted her. As she took a seat opposite his desk, he added, "I think I already know what this is about. I heard that you and Jake had it out yesterday after your show. It's a small station; word gets around."

Penny smiled. "You know, as I was coming in here, I was thinking maybe it would be best for everyone if I just quit, save you the trouble of firing me." Dale opened his mouth, but she cut him off. "But then I realized how stupid that would be. You knew what Jake was like before I started working here. How many other co-hosts has he run off? For that matter, how is he even still on the air? I don't understand how assholes like him are ever given a soapbox to use to run their mouths, but it doesn't matter. If you have another position for me, I'm willing to talk. If not, maybe it's Jake you should be thinking about letting go, because I'm through putting up with his crap."

Dale looked a little taken aback by her outburst, and for a moment, Penny felt bad. Not for what she'd said, but for the way she'd said it. He had given her a chance when no one else would have.

To her surprise, Dale smiled. In fact, his mouth twitched, and he started chuckling. "I feel like that speech almost deserves an ovation," he said. "You're absolutely right. I knew what Jake was like, and I deliberately threw you to the wolves… or wolf, I guess you could say. From my perspective, it made sense in more than one way. If you weren't the diamond in the rough my daughter thought you were, Jake would have made you run screaming. If you were, I figured you could handle yourself… which you have. And don't forget, I brought you on with absolutely no previous media experience. As it is, I'm going to have a lot of really irate employees when they hear I'm giving you your own time slot."

"I… what?" Penny couldn't wrap her mind around what he had just said. Given the way she had just unloaded on him, she half-expected to be fired, not promoted. "My own time slot? You mean my own show?"

He grinned at her. "You saw the show's statistics as well as I did. You're wasted as Jake's co-star, but I needed time to get all the details hashed out. We're moving him to a mid-morning slot with another station that I manage. You get to keep your same hours, only now it's all yours. A call-in talk show about love, life and relationships. We'll call it 'Penny for your Thoughts'. It practically named itself," he added with a grin.

She blinked for a moment, and then laughed. "I guess it did. I can't tell you how many times I've heard that line, usually from some half-wasted jock who thinks he's being clever. But the way you're using it, you turned it around so it actually means something. People are going to know my name and the point of the show from that one simple phrase. It's perfect."

Dale grinned back at her. "I'm glad you like it, because that's already how I pitched the show to our sponsors. We'll need a few more weeks to get the final details ironed out, but if you can't work with him anymore, then I'm sure we can give you some paid time off."

Penny thought about that for a moment. "I might take you up on that offer at some point, but for now? It's not like I don't know how to put him down hard if he doesn't behave. Besides, I wouldn't wish him on any other poor sap."

Dale chuckled again. "Then I'll be in touch. And I feel I do owe you an apology for one thing: I talked to Jake yesterday, told him we were moving his show. I guess that's why he was so nasty to you."

She shrugged. "After everything else I've had to deal with in my life, Jake's just a bump in my road."

When Penny got home, the apartment was quiet. Going in search of her boys, she found instead that their dining room had been converted back to its original function, with Sheldon's desk and whiteboards shoved out of the way. In the center of the room, a small round table had been set up with a snowy white tablecloth, taper candles, and place settings for two. She looked at it in confusion. Just then, Sheldon came around the corner. He was dressed in the charcoal grey suit she had convinced him to buy years ago, and he looked more handsome than ever.

"What's going on?" she asked with a smile for him despite the emotional turmoil of her day.

"Tonight, we are celebrating. I asked Howard and Bernadette to watch Stephen for a few hours, so we
have the place to ourselves until eight."

His eyes danced, belying his serious expression, but there was also a tension in the way he stood. She
studied his face for a moment, trying to understand it. He was both nervous and excited. Then his words caught up with her, and she frowned. "Celebrate? Did Dale call you? Did he tell you about the
show?"

"No. What show?"

"It's nothing," she began.

He came over to her and took her hands in his. "Do you have something to celebrate as well?" he asked. The tenderness in his face almost made her want to cry, and she realized to her alarm that she was actually tearing up.

"Yeah," she whispered, wiping at her eyes. "It's a good thing; it really is. I'm just feeling a little overwhelmed."

He wrapped his arms around her and whispered, "There, there. It's all right. Whatever you want to
tell me, know that I am here for you and that I love you."

When she had composed herself, he led her back to their bedroom. With a tinge of amusement, she saw that he had laid out the red dress—his favorite—out on a chair. Then he showed her the adjoining bathroom, where she really did laugh, because he had laid out almost every cosmetic she owned on the counter.

"I wanted to help you get ready," he explained sheepishly. "And then I realized that while I am
familiar with the cosmetics you use every day, I had no idea which ones are appropriate for special occasions. We don't go out often, and…"

"It's okay," Penny said quickly. "I don't mind… really. Spending time with you and Stephen means more to me than anything."

He smiled, one of those adorable lopsided grins that she had come to love so much, and said, "I love you too." He glanced down at his wrist (Penny was amused to see that he wore a black and silver Batman logo watch with his suit) and said, "You have approximately thirty-two minutes before our dinner arrives."

She got dressed quickly, and despite taking extra care with her hair and makeup, she was ready before Sheldon's deadline. Walking into the dining room in a pair of heels tall enough that she could almost look him in the eye, she loved the very masculine glance of appreciation he gave her. He whispered that she looked beautiful as he pulled out her chair for her. Then he draped a white linen towel over her arm and proceeded to offer her a choice of either her favorite zinfandel or sparkling cider.

She gave him a funny look. "Why would I want sparkling cider? Or is that for you?"

He looked confused for a moment, then quickly turned away as he poured the cider into his own glass. "Of course it's for me. I do want to remember this evening. I merely wanted to give you options."

She frowned at him, realizing that he hadn't yet told her what they were celebrating. Something to do with his research, she assumed. A knock at the door distracted her. Sheldon left the room and came back with insulated carriers which he unpacked to reveal a steak dinner for two.

"This came from Delmonico's," he explained. "Although I've never been there before, for a sizeable tip, the chef was willing to set up a live feed so I could see that everyone preparing our food was wearing gloves."

Penny laughed, wondering exactly how big of a tip Sheldon had to pay for that kind of special treatment. "I thought you'd gotten over your germ phobia a little more than that."

He grinned ruefully. "In many situations, yes, but not only was this a new restaurant, I wanted to ensure that neither of us would contract a viral illness simply because tonight is a special occasion."

She put down her fork and looked at him. "Honey, you never did tell me what we're celebrating."

He hesitated. "You first. You said something about a show and that you thought your manager may have contacted me?"

She wondered again at his atypical behavior. Usually, if he had something to tell her, he couldn't wait to blurt it out. "Okay. Well, I went in to talk to Dale about the situation with Jake. I was ready to quit if I had to, but he told me I'm getting my own show. It's going to be a call-in talk show. I guess I've already done that a little co-hosting with Jake the jerk, but now he's the one moving to a different station."

"Congratulations, my love. I am so very proud of you," Sheldon replied. He was smiling at her, but he still looked a little nervous, and he had barely touched his food. Come to think of it, neither had she.

"Alright, out with it. You said you had something to celebrate tonight, too. Does it have something to do with your theory?"

He nodded slowly and pushed his plate aside. From the inside pocket of his suit jacket, he pulled out a small cream-colored envelope and handed it to her. Penny looked at it curiously. For a moment, with this fancy dinner, she had thought that maybe he might be pulling out a certain piece of jewelry. She opened the envelope in bemusement to find a matching card inside. On it was written a string of symbols and what she thought were Greek letters. She looked up at him, comprehension dawning. "Is this it? Is this your universal theory?"

"Yes. I've had my work test and retested. All the math checks out. It's right; I'm sure of it."

Her face lit up with a huge smile. "Oh, honey, that's wonderful-"

"And I want you to have it," he said quickly.

She glanced uncertainly at him. "I don't understand. What do you mean, you want me to have it? This is your theory, your work that you've been obsessing over for the past six months." She tried to hand it back to him, but he refused to take it. Instead, he stood in front of her and closed her hands around the scrap of paper. Still holding her hands, he carefully lowered himself to one knee. Penny's heart began to pound, and her hands trembled in his.

"My future is literally in your hands. This represents all of my greatest accomplishments and my best possibility for winning a Nobel Prize. All these months, you have supported me and believed in me without expecting anything in return. I don't deserve to have someone like you who loves me so much, so to me, this is the only thing that is good enough to give you. I couldn't think of anything else that would show you how much you mean to me. So Penny... will you marry me?"

Penny gasped, and her hand flew to her mouth. "You mean…" Her eyes darted from the paper to his face, and suddenly, her eyes filled with tears. She knew, with absolute conviction, that she couldn't accept until he knew everything. "Oh, honey, I don't even have words to tell you how much this means to me. I love you more than anything. But before I say yes…" She paused and took a shaky breath. "There's something I have to tell you."