We continue later that evening...
The rest of the day had been a blur. She remembered kissing Leonard goodbye and then mumbling something about "never being able to un-see that," then going through all the motions of work: hustling for mostly ungrateful customers, dealing with grumpy chefs, terse managers, sore feet, cheap tips, and finally, the lonely drive home. She could have stopped at a bar and downed a few drinks, but she also could have run into any number of men she'd been with and hooked up, and she was trying to be a one-man woman these days, and it just wouldn't have felt right.
She could have made a booty call to Leonard; it was their go-to move when things got stressful, weird, dull, or they were too drunk to really care. He was always game, and the little guy always tried hard, and sometimes, meaningful but substandard love-making was better than mind-blowing, body-rocking, mega-orgasmic sex with no emotions attached.
Hell, she could have turned on some music, filled her bathtub with scalding hot water with big fluffy bubbles, lit a few candles, poured a glass of wine, laid back and loved on herself, hitting all the right spots, blowing out all the stress, and just pleasuring herself until she was a wet, blissed-out, self-sated lump of happy.
But then he had to go and screw everything up.
It wasn't bad enough that she had the Batman theme playing on a loop in her head all night. It wasn't bad enough she spent half her shift thinking about Klingons and then wasted her one break Googling them on her Android, only to find out they were those ugly things with bumpy heads from Star Trek. That got her so upset she screwed up her next two orders and dumped someone's turtle cheesecake on the floor. It wasn't even bad enough that she'd forgotten to pick up another bottle of wine, so that even her hot date with herself was a no-go.
No, the worst part of this whole clusterf**k of a day was that seeing his…thing flipped a switch. Cracked open a door. Struck a spark. It turned on something that she had never wanted to start, and now no amount of sex, booze, or shopping would settle the growing storm that gnawed in her gut.
Sheldon Cooper really was a man. A hella lotta man. And she wanted some of that.
But the idea of even seeing him as a mature adult filled her with disgust. Part of his "deal" had always been his innocence, his seeming immunity to the tawdry, base things that filled her and everyone else's minds: Money, social status, possessions, reality TV, beauty, and her personal favorite, sex. Yes, yes, yes! Spreading her legs and taking someone's body into hers made her feel alive! But for Sheldon, it was dirty, disgusting, unsanitary, and, worst of all, inconvenient and distracting. When one was solving the mysteries of the universe and winning a Nobel Prize, one didn't have time to engage in coitus, his favorite word for the act.
And the truth was, it was one of his most attractive qualities. For all of his annoying quirks, phobias, routines, stuffiness, bad clothes, and snootiness, there was something about his purity of heart that drew Penny to him. It had started out as pity, then morphed into a kind of sympathetic teacher-student thing, then a sisterly loyalty, and now, what? Sexual attraction?
Bleaagh! She winced as she sat on her couch, nursing a Diet Coke, staring at the blank TV screen, trying to drive the crawling sensations of dread from her skin. And yet, she'd overcome that creepy feeling many times with guys, whether it was the boss she wanted to get a raise from, the nerd who was writing her term paper, the jock who dated the cheerleader upon whom she was exacting her revenge. She'd even had make-up sex with that same cheerleader after a conciliatory bottle of tequila! She'd flirted with teachers for better grades, directors for bit parts, and yes, policemen for torn-up tickets. Sex was just a means to an end: her happiness. But what about sleeping with someone who actually challenges me would make me happy?
The question hung in her mind, bringing with it another: Would Sheldon ever actually want to sleep with me?
Sheldon lay in his bed as he had done the whole day, steeped in torpidity and shame. It had started with the stress of dealing with his physical discomfort, and having to try to overcome his body with the power of his mind, and failing, knowing that his mind was really the cause of his problem. For it was from his nervous system that all of the troublesome waters of lust had sprung. True, it was his penis that most obviously manifested his desire for coitus, but it was merely the tip of the iceberg, so to speak. For behind his physical presentation of sexual interest was a sea of chemical and electrical impulses, fed by physical stimuli, as well as the emotional and mental processes of recall. In the vernacular, he was indeed a "hot mess."
In his mind, he could never have denied that Penny was a physically attractive specimen of humanity. Her proportions, fitness, and above-average hygiene made her an ideal mate for any given homo sapiens. Of course, Sheldon was no mere homo sapiens, a fact that made the issue all that more troubling. Returning to Penny's less-evolved state, her genetic make-up, such as it was, fit well within the parameters of the Western concept of beauty. It would not be a stretch to say that she was pretty, and, when she made an effort, and avoided her tendency to tramp it up, she could be almost fetching. Lovely, even. Eye-catching, certainly. Fascinating, in any case.
Then, of course, there were the less-objective qualities that kicked her desirability "up a notch," as they say. When not trying to attract every male of the species with her feminine mating calls, she could be quite pleasant and even winsome with her "sunny" personality. She was annoyingly childish when it came to things like television shows, music, and other such lowbrow entertainments, and yet somehow she had a way of making one want to join in her pedantic interests, even if one had never experienced them before, just for the experience of doing them with her, and her presence made even something as horrific as driving a car without a license or running two miles worth remembering. Then there were the idiotic nicknames. Moonpie. Whack-a-doodle. Sweetie. The list goes on and on. She prattled them over and over until you actually preferred her stupid, inane appellations, as long as they were coming out of her mouth.
Going even deeper, there were physical and behavioral quirks that critically could be considered flaws, but that had the inverse effect of making her more desirable. She was a profligate drinker, a veritable alcoholic, and yet the way she casually cradled her glass, or the way her lips caressed its rim, made you want to keep it full just to watch her lift and sip again and again. The way those full lips kinked asymmetrically, making her smile crooked, almost as if its warmth defied her imperfections, made her face glow with an idiosyncratic perfection. The way she could wear her hair in any style and still be inviting, whether she had it tied up in a rubber band on the top of her head, or braided loosely to the side, or swept up in the most elegant coiffure, was maddening in its allure. /
Drat, the foresail is swelling again, he grimaced, stretching his legs out.
It had been like this all day, him trying to measure, test, probe, and calculate all of the data his brain had been accumulating on the imaginary marker board, all the while fighting his physical urge to mate. He realized that his battle was futile, and the only way to relieve the pressure and discomfort of his swollen genitals was to literally take matters into his own hands. He had experienced nocturnal emissions, and even experimented a few times with manual stimulation, but the unpleasant aftermath and clean-up had been so distasteful that he concluded it was not worth the trouble to continue pursuing it. That was when, in desperation, he sought out Leonard's assistance, knowing he was well-experienced at such things, and given his current relationship, was likely to have the necessary materials to perform the procedure.
He had not expected her to be in the apartment, and that had been the ultimate indignity, having her see him in his unmentionables, and in such a deplorable state. Immediately after running into his room, his flesh, unable to contain the surfeit of hormones, burst like an overheated sausage, and he fell on the bed, his body shuddering involuntarily as he soiled his favorite Batman briefs. Just the thought of her seeing him nearly naked was too much for him to bear.
While relieving the pain in his scrotum, it left him limp, damp, and contaminated. After thoroughly showering and disinfecting, disposing of the ruined clothes, and changing his sheets, he crawled into bed, and had remained there for the duration. He fell asleep at one point, which, like everything else this day, had been outside of his regular schedule, so now it was late and he was not restful.
He had even given up his mental marker boarding, and just lay flat on his back, thinking about all of these things, trying to find a logical solution that eliminated these feelings altogether, or at least suppressed them so that he could continue to co-exist with his neighbor without any unpleasantness in their interactions. But he had no precedent, no previous research, not even an untested hypothesis, upon which he could build even a tentative resolution to the problem, other than the one that would be most painful, most difficult, the one with the biggest potential for error, and therefore highly likely to end in a negative result. But he had no choice.
He had to go visit Penny. Immediately.
Screw the wine, screw the bubbles, screw the candles. Just screw me. She realized the only way to deal with any of this shit was just to open her legs and take it all in. So she stood in her shower, her massage head pulsing, sobbing and gasping, saying over and over, "I love you, I love you, I love you, God damn you!"
She didn't know if she was talking to Leonard, Sheldon, her cheerleader friend, or herself. But she felt almost alive. And that was the important thing. But being almost alive hurt worse than being dead. Because at least the dead don't have to worry about falling in love. Whether it was with your friend, your neighbor, a stranger, or your teammate. And the dead don't have work, or make small talk, or try to pretend they're not feeling something, or have sex, or pretend to have sex, or dream about having sex. The dead just had to lie there and be quiet, and that didn't seem like such a bad deal right now.
Just tell him how you feel, a voice in her head said gently.
"No, you don't understand," she heard herself say. "He doesn't feel anything. How can I explain how I feel to a robot?"
Robots don't have those, the voice countered, referencing the previous afternoon's incident.
"You'd think that would make it easier, right?" she returned, turning the shower head down to a gentle spray and replacing it in the hook. "But it doesn't. It only makes it weird and sick."
Since when did that ever stop you from getting what you want?
She sat down in the tub, the water hitting the top of her head and trickling down in rivulets on her face. "I don't know what I want with him. That's the problem. It's like I'm on this journey, and it's taken me this long to figure out I feel this way. How much longer will it take just to know if he even understands what it means?"
That's love, Sweetie. A long, long journey with someone you trust. Where you go doesn't matter. As long as you're with your best friend, you're golden.
"But what if he doesn't love me?" she sobbed, her voice cracking with emotion.
He will always be your Moonpie. Always.
She whimpered in disgust, throwing her hand against the bottom of the tub. There was no answer to her question. At least inside her head. She sat on the bath mat for a few minutes, the water slowly turning cold, washing away the rest of her pleasure and shame. Somehow, over the din of the shower, she heard it, and her heart seemed to go in two directions: up into her throat, and down into her guts.
Knock. Knock.
"Penny."
Knock. Knock.
"Penny."
Knock. Knock.
"Penny."
Something was wrong. He only did two knocks. Everything else was right, but he only did three sets of two knocks. This was not good.
She didn't want to see him, didn't want to hear him, didn't want to even acknowledge his existence, but she knew she had to go open the door. It was time to pay the piper. She just hoped he took Visa.