The object in Sheldon's hand looked like a diamond wedding ring. It was beautiful: a large, pink diamond solitaire surrounded by graceful arches of baguettes. Penny's mind stuttered to a halt as she stared at it. Why did he have it? Was he planning to propose to someone? "What... what is it? Where did you get it?" she stammered.

He stuffed the ring box into his pocket, and then jumped up and paced around the room. "Do you promise not to tell anyone else about this?"

"Hey, I can keep a secret a lot better than you can," she retorted.

"In Vegas, the morning after we went out, I woke up in my own room with a terrible hangover. The bed was rumpled, and... I wasn't wearing anything. My clothes were strew all over the floor, and that ring was lying on the nightstand, along with a pamphlet for an escort service. There's one other thing." He hesitated, and then got out the ring box again. Lifting out the liner, he reached in and held up an unadorned platinum band.

Penny stared at it. "Is that what I think it is?" she asked, with an odd inflection in her voice.

"Given that I woke up wearing this on the fourth finger of my left hand, I surmise that it's a wedding band. I think I got married to a… a prostitute."

"Holy crap on a cracker."

"An apt sentiment."

"Well, at least it was just one of those fake Vegas weddings. It's not like you're married for real."

He frowned. "Where did you get that addle-brained idea? A marriage performed in Las Vegas is as legally binding as a marriage performed anywhere else."

"Wait, so you're actually married, for real?" she asked, pressing her hands against her roiling stomach.

"The evidence suggests so, although I have no definitive proof."

She shook her head slowly and said nothing for a long time. Other people might have been uncomfortable, but Sheldon simply waited, assuming she needed more time to assimilate this information than he would. And to be honest, he was still processing the idea too, even if he had grasped the implications on an intellectual level almost immediately.

"What are you going to do?" she said at last, in a whisper.

He concealed the simple band back in the box again. "I'm not certain. I had imagined that any woman who sells her body would be quick to take fiscal advantage of a man foolish enough to bind himself to her in matrimony. The fact that no one has contacted me has given me pause. I suppose it's possible that this unknown woman was similarly inebriated and doesn't remember getting married."

Penny drew in a sharp breath. "They shouldn't let people get married if they're that drunk," she muttered. Then she sat up straighter. "What did you tell the guys?"

He looked at her in surprise. "This is not something I am proud of. I haven't told them anything. Why else do you think I asked you to keep it a secret?"

She frowned. "I guess I'm not sure. I know you hate secrets because you can't keep from blabbing them to the first person you see."

"It's true that I hate it when people want me to keep their secrets," he replied. "But there are many subjects from my past which I simply feel aren't worth sharing. Since this is something I fervently wish never happened, I'm most certainly not going to discuss it with my friends."

"Huh," Penny said thoughtfully. "That's good to know, I guess. So what if this woman never contacts you?"

He sighed. "I suppose I will have to track her down. Every year, I file my taxes by March 15th. I will need to get the marriage annulled by then to avoid having to file a joint tax return."

"Taxes?" she practically screeched. "That's not a good reason. No, no, no, you should just pretend this never happened."

"That is highly improbable," he scolded. "If I am truly married, the state of Nevada will have official documentation to verify it," he answered. "Perhaps the best approach is to locate this woman immediately so the matter can be resolved. After all, if she wants alimony, this may end up in litigation."

Penny stared at him. "What if she's actually a nice person?" she whispered.

Sheldon scoffed. "Unlikely, but if she is, then hopefully she will release me from this ill-advised union with as little fuss and as much haste as possible. Regardless, I need to get this matter settled. Now that you know too, I believe it would be wiser to get an annulment or divorce sooner rather than later. Will you drive me back to Las Vegas?"

"Me?" Penny gulped.

"Of course, you're the logical choice. You are the only one who knows about my predicament, you have a valid driver's license… and you are my closest friend."

"What about Leonard?"

He shook his head. "I'm certain he will be too busy packing to assist me," he said bitterly.

"Yeah, I wish he would have talked to us about moving out first," Penny said. "I mean, I figured it would happen eventually, but just because he's got a girlfriend doesn't mean it's okay for him to write off his friends." She felt a little sad at the idea of Leonard leaving. They'd been friends and neighbors for a long time.

"Priya would've put a stop to it. She thinks Leonard still has feelings for you, and for all I know, she could be correct. Either way, she views you as a rival and thus has asked Leonard to stop associating with you. You certainly enabled him to abide by her wishes by assiduously avoiding the both of us in the weeks following our last trip to Vegas."

She wrinkled up her nose in confusion. "Wait. Are you saying that if I'd been hanging around more, maybe Leonard and Priya wouldn't be moving in together?"

"It's entirely possible. She received a promotion which required her to move back to New Delhi. Because of her relationship with Leonard, she decided to stay. Instead, she leveraged that offer to get a better one with a local law firm. If she hadn't been convinced that he was completely committed to her, she may have decided to returned home,ending her relationship with Leonard." He peered at her, trying to decipher her expression. "Do you regret breaking up with him?" he asked curiously.

She shook her head. "No, I just wish I had ended things between us sooner, before I broke his heart."

Sheldon snorted derisively. "I doubt you broke his heart. He thought he was in love with you from the moment he laid eyes on you, before he knew a thing about you except that you were exceptionally pretty."

"Do you really think so?" she asked with a strange catch in her voice.

"Of course. He called dibs on you like you were the last donut in a box of Krispy Kremes," he said.

She chuckled a little at that, but then said, "No, what I meant was, do you think I'm pretty?"

"It's a fact," he said seriously. "Your features are highly symmetrical and aesthetically pleasing."

She mused over that for a moment. He thought she was pretty. They spent most of their evenings together. He refused to be anything more than friends with Amy. And unless she was mistaken, they had actually gotten married that night in Vegas. Her stomach twisted again. If only she hadn't deceived him, they might have had a chance for their friendship to develop into something more.

Sheldon hadn't forgotten his plans to get to the bottom of his mysterious marriage. He brought it up again the next evening over dinner. Penny tried to dissuade him, but he told her that it was disrupting his peace of mind. He was determined to resolve the matter as soon as possible. Her next tactic was to tell him she was busy working, but he merely suggested they go over the next couple of days she had off. After a few times of claiming her schedule was packed, he finally got frustrated. He said that if his closest friend couldn't find time to help him, he would just have to go by himself on public transportation. She was instantly contrite, knowing how much he hated taking taxis or buses. Plus, she could see the dark circles under his eyes and the forlorn way he eyed the packing boxes Leonard had left in the apartment. His whole life was falling apart, and the only person he turned to for help was her. Although Penny knew she didn't deserve his trust, she felt she had no choice but to tell him she would drive him to Vegas.

In the days leading up to their trip, Penny was a nervous wreck. She couldn't sleep at night, and everything she ate tasted like cardboard. Whenever she talked to any of her friends, she was able to put on a good face, drawing on her acting abilities to appear calm and in control. The truth was that her thoughts chased themselves around in her mind endlessly. She needed to tell Sheldon the truth. She couldn't tell him the truth. He would never forgive her. Maybe there was still some way he would never find out. Was he right that they had actually gotten married? He could be wrong, couldn't he? Except as far as she could remember, he'd never been wrong before. He was going to hate her. She was going to lose him. Somehow, the thought of betraying Sheldon's trust was the one thought that replayed the most often in her head: I can't lose him. She felt she could willingly say goodbye to every other one of her friends. It would be sad, but she could do it. They had all been pulling away ever since she dumped Leonard anyway, as if somehow she came off as the bad guy for trying to quit stringing him along. But Sheldon had sought her out when no one else did. He had been loyal, supportive, and - if you knew how to read him - surprisingly kind. She couldn't give him up, not without a fight.

Penny gripped the steering wheel so hard her knuckles turned white. They were pulling into the parking lot behind the Clark County courthouse. She glanced over at Sheldon and saw that his face was grim and his jaw tight. He thought he was going to confront the worst mistake of his life, and he might still be proven right. All her pleading and arguments hadn't swayed him from his course. He was determined to free himself from a marriage he didn't even remember. Her stomach squeezed tighter until she thought she might pass out. She had to do something. She couldn't let him find out the truth by seeing her name typed out on an official marriage license.

Finally, just as they were about to enter the courthouse, Penny grabbed Sheldon's sleeve and pulled him aside. "There's something I need to tell you," she said nervously.

He glanced pointedly at her hand, and she released his jacket, smoothing out the wrinkles.

She fixed her eyes on the brick wall beyond his shoulder. "Leonard was crazy about me, but I just couldn't feel the same way about him," she began. "That's why I broke up with him. But there's one person whose good opinion I value more than anyone else's. I knew I loved him deeply, but I always thought of him as just a friend… until he kissed me. And I knew that a part of me had been waiting for him without knowing it." Her voice broke, and she blinked back tears. "When I found out that he didn't just want to fool around… when he got down on one knee and proposed… I believed he really meant it, so I said yes."

"Who?" he demanded. "Who did you get married to?" His trepidation was so great that he completely forgot about using proper grammar.

"You," she whispered. "I'm the one you married."

Sheldon reeled back a few steps. "You knew," he cried accusingly.

She understood exactly what he meant. Stepping forward, she grabbed his arm as if to prevent him from running away. "When I woke up later that night with you next to me in bed, I didn't remember then that we'd gotten married. I thought we'd just slept together, but even if I'd known, I'm not sure it would've made a difference. I was panicking because I thought you'd hate me. That's when I found that flyer and decided to leave it on the nightstand. I wasn't thinking too clearly, except that I thought it was better for you to hate some random person than me. Please, please forgive me. I just didn't want to lose you." Her voice lowered as she spoke those last words, and her eyes brimmed with moisture.

He stared at her as if he had never seen her before. Then he jerked his arm free, turned and ran off. After a moment's shock, Penny hurried after him, calling for him to wait. His longer legs carried him away from her until he disappeared around a corner. By the time she got there, she discovered she had wandered onto a crowded main thoroughfare. There was no sign of Sheldon. She spent over an hour searching for him in that vicinity, and then she looked every other place he might have gone. Not many places came to mind. She looked around the Bellagio fountains and went back to the western-themed casino which housed the shooting gallery. As her hope gave way to despair, she sank down onto a bench. Unable to hold back her tears any longer, she buried her face in her hands and wept.