"Hey, I haven't seen Penny around in a while, have you?" Leonard asked as he strolled into the Cheesecake Factory with his friends. Howard shrugged and Raj shook his head.
"She wasn't there for Halo or laundry night last week," Sheldon said, looking peeved.
"Gee, laundry night, how on earth could she miss all that excitement?" Howard muttered sarcastically.
"Maybe she's just been working a lot," Leonard said.
"Maybe she's trying to stay away since you told her that was what Priya wanted, " Raj commented with a hint of bitterness. He still wasn't happy knowing that his friend was sleeping with his sister.
"That still doesn't explain why she missed laundry night," Sheldon complained, but as usual, everyone ignored him. The hostess led them to their usual table. In a few minutes, Bernadette appeared.
"Hi, guys. What do you want to order?"
"Bernie, hi. What are you doing here?" Howard asked with a pleased smile. Apparently, they had made up over whatever they had quarreled about in Vegas.
She shrugged. "Penny asked if she could switch with me for Wednesday night, so I told her it was no big deal."
"But it is a big deal!" This was from Sheldon. He scowled at Bernadette. "Doesn't she realize we have a routine? On Tuesday nights, we come to the Cheesecake Factory, where Penny serves me my bacon barbecue cheeseburger with the bacon, barbecue and cheese on the side."
Bernie shrugged. "None of my business." She dumped the menus on the table. "I'll give the rest of you a few minutes to decide what you want." She gave Howard a wink and a coy smile before moving on to her next table.
Sheldon fumed all through dinner, even though Bernadette had gotten his order precisely right. Penny was definitely avoiding him, and he had invested far too much effort into their friendship for her to treat him this way. After dinner, Leonard dropped Sheldon off in front of their apartment building and then left to go see Priya. Sheldon marched straight up the four flights of steps to Penny's door and started knocking. Three raps, and then he called her name. After repeating this pattern two more times, he waited impatiently. He could hear the television faintly in the background, so he started knocking again. Penny finally opened the door, partway through his knock. He scowled at her and carefully finished the pattern by tapping on her door frame.
"What do you want, Sheldon?" she asked. He noticed that she was dressed in sweats and sagged against the door frame. He wondered if she had been drinking.
"It's Tuesday night. You were supposed to be at the Cheesecake Factory to serve me my bacon barbecue cheeseburger."
She looked away. "Yeah, well, sometimes things don't work out like you expect."
"What are you talking about? You were scheduled to work tonight, and you deliberately switched with Bernadette. You also missed Halo night and laundry night."
"I was busy," she replied defensively, looking down at her feet.
He peered over her shoulder. "It looks like all you're doing right now is binge-watching Sex and the City and consuming an entire bottle of red wine by yourself."
She winced. "So what? What do you care?"
"Obviously, you are throwing my entire routine in disarray."
"Well then, I guess you're gonna have to make a new one." She attempted to close the door, but he stuck his foot in the opening.
"Aren't we friends anymore?" he asked in quite a different tone of voice. He sounded like a lost little boy.
"I'm still your friend," she answered after a pause.
"Are you insinuating that I am no longer a friend to you? I don't think I am familiar with that particular social dynamic," he added with a frown. "But nothing has changed in our interpersonal-" He halted, and an unusual look of uncertainty crossed his face. "Does this have anything to do with our recent trip to Las Vegas?"
She flinched visibly.
"It does, doesn't it?" he pressed. Grimacing, he asked, "Did I expose my bare backside to you?"
She almost smiled at that, but then paled and shook her head. "I honestly don't remember," she confessed. "Most of that night is a bit of a blur to me too."
"Then why are you not adhering to my schedule?" he demanded.
Penny heard the real question beneath his rudeness: Why are you avoiding me? She sighed. One thing was for sure: she apparently had a hard time saying no to Sheldon Cooper, no matter what the circumstances. "It's complicated," she heard herself saying.
"You aren't busy now," he said, almost in a pleading tone. "We could watch Star Trek."
She felt her resistance dissolving under the juxtaposition of his solemn eyes and lost expression.
"Not Star Trek, something else," she heard herself say. Sheldon stood there, looking at her pointedly, until she slid shoes on her feet. She switched off her own TV to follow him across the hall so he could sit in his 0,0,0,0 spot. She made him watch Sex in the City, just because she could. He complained bitterly about it while he was making popcorn for the two of them. Penny tried not to laugh at how hard he seemed to be struggling with his conflicting desires. Then she sobered, remembering waking up next to him. The memory gave her a sharp twinge of remorse. When her show was over, she let him flip over to a documentary about animals. She watched surreptitiously as he sat precisely in his favorite spot, his own bowl of popcorn clenched in his lap so he wouldn't have to risk sharing with her and having her fingers touch his food. It seemed impossible to think that anything sexual had ever happened between them. Maybe she was wrong. Maybe nothing had happened. Just as she was thinking this, he glanced over at her, and their gazes met. His face may not have revealed much emotion, but his eyes glowed happily at her. Her face lit up in an answering smile before she could stop it, and she just barely stopped herself from reaching for his hand. She snapped her gaze back to the television, mentally cursing herself as a complete idiot.
Sheldon stood in front of his whiteboard, lost in thought. This was not an uncommon occurrence, but the cause of his distraction was. He had been wondering once again how he could have gotten married. What kind of woman could have persuaded him to tie the knot? Had she been a master manipulator, or had he connected with her on some personal level? Did he really take her back to his hotel room, allow her access to his bed, and have coitus with a woman of ill repute three times? His hand shook. He had always considered himself to be the epitome of rationality, but eloping in Vegas with an escort was not rational at all.
The worst part was that his mind just wouldn't leave it alone. Much as he wished he could simply pretend nothing had happened, something had, and he didn't even know what, exactly. He had to find out, and his investigation ought to start with Penny.
He gripped his marker tightly. The thought of telling her what he had done made him feel nauseated. He could tolerate her mockery, but what he dreaded was her pity. The last thing he wanted was for her to see him as ridiculous or helpless. He didn't want anything to shatter the close bond between them. It had gotten to the point where he even resented the time he spent skyping with Amy, even though he scheduled their weekly chats on a night when Penny usually worked.
Amy was the third woman in the increasingly complicated tangle of his life. He liked talking with her, but all too often, she had this rapacious gleam in her eyes as she looked at him. It unnerved him, and he couldn't imagine confiding his dilemma to her either. Any advice she would give would be based on simian behavior, of little relevance and often directly contrary to his purposes. So the only thing to do, he concluded, was to wait. He could put off looking into this purported marriage until tax season, but by then, he would have to know for sure or risk a potential audit if his information wasn't correct.
Penny knocked back the rest of her drink, wishing it could make girls night out more fun. All Bernie could do was talk about her little "Howie-wowie". Blech. Amy was ticked off at Sheldon. Having "invested" almost a year of her life with him (as she put it), she was increasingly frustrated by his refusal to call her anything other than a friend. Bernie advised her to try to make him jealous by going out on a date with someone else.
"But who would want to go out with me?" Amy wailed despairingly. She was starting to get on Penny's nerves.
"Hey, can I buy you a drink?"
Penny looked up at the guy who was leaning over the table. He was kind of cute, but ever since that night, that horrible mistake, the idea of a one-night stand turned her stomach.
"Sorry, we're having girls night," she replied, waving her hand at her friends. He shrugged and walked away.
"See, it's so easy for you. You're gorgeous. Guys fall all over themselves trying to ask you out," Amy whined.
Penny reluctantly turned her attention back to the ongoing drama. "How about Stuart?" she found herself saying. "He asked me the other day if you were single."
Amy grimaced. "Stuart? He owns a comic book store. Plus, he's whiter than some of my albino monkeys. He must have a serious vitamin D deficiency. What makes you think I'd want to go out with him?"
Penny resisted the urge to throw the rest of her drink in Amy's face as Bernie said something supportive. Penny tuned it out. This was Amy at her worst: she seemed to enjoy bemoaning her situation, milking every circumstance for pity, rather than actually doing anything to change her life. Honestly, she could've had a boyfriend years ago if she'd just stop looking down on everyone and dressing in her grandma's hand-me-downs. Come to think of it, some guys, like Stuart and Sheldon, didn't even seem to care what she wore. It all came down to her attitude.
"Hey, Stuart's a nice guy," Penny all but snapped at Amy. "He's sweet, he's eager to please, and he owns his own business, which is something none of us can say. He'd ask you out in a heartbeat if he thought you were interested. You say I get all the guys, but the truth is, you only want the ones you can't get." She closed her mouth with a snap before the rest of it came out: how she was tired of Amy's self-pitying and manipulating. The only reason she tried to befriend her at all was for Sheldon's sake.
"If all you want is to make him jealous, Stuart is the perfect choice…" Bernadette began.
Once again, Penny stopped listening. She didn't want to be a part of this anymore. She wanted to go to Sheldon's place and… and run away with him… or something. Anything to keep both of them from sinking further down into the pathetic mess their lives had become.