4

Wednesday morning, Sheldon was up by itself in an empty apartment using the bathroom on time at 8AM, preening himself by 8:15 and eating breakfast at 8:30. The place was so quiet, but he looked around the room looking for someone to talk to and share his thoughts. A light sigh and he realized how much he had become used to having another life form in the apartment with him for company. By 8:45, he was clean and dressed and ready to head to work, but who was going to drive him now that Leonard was out of his life.

"Penny?" He knocked at the door of the resident blonde neighbor across the hall who once dated Leonard. "Penny?" He knocked again, but then his pattern of behavior made him knock again. "Penny?"

"What?" She opened the door rudely awakened and not ready to spare any one's feelings. Her eyes were flared, and her eyebrows were furrowed. Her teeth were clenched in angry frustration. What idiot dared wake her at this time in the morning?

"Time to drive me to work!" Sheldon stood at her door with a hesitant eagerness.

"What?" Penny was still half asleep. "Why can't Leonard do it?"

"Well, because despite after all my logical reasons and convincing arguments persuading him it wasn't it a good idea," Sheldon responded. "Leonard moved out."

"What?" Penny suddenly woke up. "What do you mean he moved out?"

"I don't understand." Sheldon was stymied by her surprise to the fact. "What part of moving out do you not understand? I mean, he and the guys packed up his stuff and transferred it to a new location."

"What?"

"Penny," Sheldon sighed. "I don't know how much more simpler I could put it." She marched past him to the guys' apartment and pulled on the door, but Sheldon had already locked it. Swatting and hitting Sheldon to unlock it, she barged forward in her shorts and tank top and tread in her bare feet through the apartment and down the hall to Leonard's room. Nothing looked amiss yet, but when she pushed open his door, she was taken aback. The room was stripped clean. It was empty down to the carpet. The closet was vacant of his clothes and collectibles. Penny's eyes widened in stunned surprise, and her hands came up to cover her shocked and overwhelming alarm. Not a poster was left, not a stick of furniture was left… Gone were the comic books, action figures, Star Wars bed sheets, Star Wars curtains, his Star Trek uniform, his Battlestar Galactica flight suit, the model of the Lost City of Kandor, it was all gone. The room was as barren and empty as the day Leonard had moved into it.

"Oh, my god…" Penny's eyes were crying, and her hands were trembling. "He did it. He actually did it. He moved out…"

"Penny…" Sheldon was ready to go. "If you're driving me, we should really leave now to beat the traffic."

"I should have told him not to move…" Penny was deep into her shock. "He wanted my advice, and I didn't give it."

"Penny…" Sheldon tried to understand what was happening. "If you're thinking of moving in here, I don't think it would work out. My mother wouldn't like it if I shared the place with a member of the opposite gender." Penny grew tired of his rambling and grabbed the back of his underwear from out of his shorts, yanking it up like the wedgies he knew so well from high school. Sheldon suddenly screamed like a girl as parts of his external anatomy went where they were not meant to go.

"Where'd he move?" She hissed at him. "Where'd he move?"

"Thirty-Eight Fifteen North Ocean Grove!" Sheldon's voice went briefly ultra-sonic until she let him go and raced out of the room. Hopping briefly like a one-legged kangaroo, he got his male genitalia back where they belonged and braced himself on the wall to catch his breath. "Yee-ow!" He fought to catch his breath. "It's grammar school all over again! It does still hurt fifteen years later…" He walked out of the room like a cartoon character with his body bouncing up and down and his feet jostling to try and loosen his underwear pulled up tight around his buttocks. Walking down the hall, he ambled along trying to loosen his underwear through the seat of his pants then noticed Penny sitting distraughtly on his sofa. Her hands held her head up, her knees were together with her feet apart. She looked as if she was crying.

"I thought you were going after Leonard." He asked.

"I can't!" She sobbed. "If I go after him, he'll just think I want to get back together with him." She didn't even look up.

"Do you want to get back together with him?" Sheldon asked.

"No…"

"Then what's the problem?"

Penny lifted her head.

"I think I'm just now realizing I made a major mistake breaking up with him." She confessed to herself.

"Oh…" Sheldon heard her. He checked his watch and paused a second. He looked back to Penny.

"You're in my spot…"

Over on Ocean Grove, Leonard woke in his new room. Taking a moment to realize where he was, he looked at his watch. It was just a little past quarter to nine in the morning, but he no longer had to get up early to beat the traffic and use the bathroom as according to Sheldon's schedule. He had his own bathroom and a nice wide closet with shelves to display more of his figures. It had only taken around three hours with Jimmy and the guys to carry his stuff in last night. The whole ordeal was sort of like a party using the back stairway and electric-powered dumb waiter while eating pizza in the kitchen in between trips. Most of Leonard's stuff was still loosely packed up, but Jimmy had provided him the fresh linens for the bed, the new light bulbs for the light fixture and fresh towels for the bathroom. Not sure if he should go down in his robe, he instead showered and shaved ready to head to work at the university and came down dressed and clean and ready to face the day.

"There's my little buddy…" Jimmy had a habit of imitating voices of characters from popular media like the Skipper from "Gilligan's Island." Leonard was not quite familiar with that show despite its popularity as a TV icon; he'd only seen it a few times. "Like some eggs?" He was scrambling eggs for himself while cooking his sausage in the microwave and making toast in the toaster. Leonard noticed the coffee pot and poured himself some coffee.

"Sure…" He sounded. "Sounds great!"

"How'd you sleep?"

"It's so quiet here!" Leonard sipped his coffee from a mug he took off a hook hanging off the counter. "I don't think I've ever slept so soundly before." Jimmy gave him his own eggs and toast then made new eggs for himself. "I've never eaten eggs on Waffle Day either!"

"Waffle Day?"

"Sheldon only eats waffles on Wednesdays." Leonard sat at the counter seats. "French Toast Thursdays, Scrambled Egg Fridays…"

"Why did you stay so long with that guy?"

"It wasn't always bad." Leonard confessed. "After a certain point, you just sort of got into the stream of things…" He took the saltshaker and lightly salted his eggs. "Problem was, I couldn't stop him from hitting the rocks!" He watched as Jimmy placed the salt back in its place. The toast popped out of the toaster.

"Leonard…" Jimmy offered Leonard some sausage from the microwave when it buzzed then handed him the butter for the toast. "No offense, but if I had lived with the guy, I'd have bludgeoned him in his sleep a long time ago."

"Don't get me wrong; we were friends too…" Leonard buttered his toast and placed some of his eggs on it before eating it. "We had a lot of good memories; the worst parts were went he went completely unpredictable." He sipped his coffee. "When Sheldon stayed predictable, he was okay. The problem was when he broke script." He finished off his coffee. "It was like living a TV series that couldn't stay on single network. You got any juice?"

"Refrigerator." Jimmy made his plate then turned off the stove to wipe the frying pan of excess oil before placing it and the spatula in the dishwasher. He also recovered the butter dish and took it with him to the table to sit down in a routine he had down pat. Leonard felt he was watching a distinct choreography as Jimmy carried his breakfast, the butter and utensils to the table then came and took out the orange juice Leonard had just put into the refrigerator, poured a small glass and place it back before closing the refrigerator and finally sitting down. He started wondering if he had left one obsessive-compulsive for another one.

"How long did you live alone here?"

"Uh…" Jimmy salted his eggs then placed the salt back into the stand. "Let's see…" He thought about it. "Sara married two or three Christmases ago…" He tried to count how many times his older sister had been back home since moving to Sacramento. "My nephew, Charlie, is starting the first grade…" He paused a bit confused. "Kate accused me of missing her twenty-eight birthday…"

"Another sister?"

"My old girlfriend…" Jimmy revealed. "She was half a year younger than me… Eight years? That can't be right!"

"Eight years?" Leonard joined him at the table.

"No, that can't be right!" Jimmy looked confused. "Sara's only been gone for three years!"

Leonard looked around the room. It was modernized turn of the century kitchen with a heat induction stove, industrial refrigerator and granite counter top with a steel plated sink, but there was still an old-fashioned wood-burning stove against the wall as decoration. The sink faced the window to the side of the house, and the dishwasher was at the bottom of a cabinet next to it. The stove was part of the center island in the middle of the room with a far door to the pantry and the dining room at the front of the house. By the door to the pantry was a calendar for October 1998.

"Something tells me she's been gone a lot longer than three years." He rolled his eyes. "How many kids does she have?"

"Two."

"How old are they?"

"Five and Seven."

"Are you sure they aren't maybe twelve and fourteen?"

"Yes."

Leonard pointed to the calendar. Jimmy looked up to it then turned back feeling like an old man.

"I was supposed to replace that in 2003!"

"2003 or 1993?"

"Like I said, Leonard…" Jimmy had turned from a young guy in his late Twenties to a guy in his mid-Thirties in a few minutes. "There are parts of this house I've not been inside of in a long time."

"Yeah…" Leonard sipped his juice. "Uh, when are you going to let me see your grandfather's study?"

"I already tried getting into it." Jimmy confessed as he spooned some eggs. "The key snapped in the lock. I'm going to have to get a locksmith for it."

"Why do I get the strange feeling there are Christmas gifts hidden in there from 1987?"

"For all I know, my grandmother's still in there!"