Chapter 16

Penny was in her car driving to CalTech to see Leonard. There were no bones about it, she had been avoiding him. She didn't know what to say to him, so much had gone down. Their fight, clubbing with her friends, the whole situation with the drugs, it was a lot to handle.

She was so stressed out, she still hadn't heard from her so called friends. She was teetering on feeling extremely angry with them and extremely worried. The whole thing was making her feel nauseous. Thank-God Bernie had helped her the way she did, or she wouldn't even have a job right now.

Penny parked, and walked into the Physics building at CalTech and headed towards Leonard's lab. As she walked down the hall, she looked at a familiar door. Dr. Sheldon Cooper, Ph.D, Theoretical Physics. Should she stop in and talk to Sheldon? He had been so angry with her, the last time they had spoken. She wasn't sure what she wanted to say to him. He had been her dear friend for so many years, she hated having bad feelings between them. Perhaps they could talk all this through.

She gently rapped on the door.

"Come in", she heard Sheldon call out.

Penny walked into Sheldon's office. What was going on here? There was a sleeping bag and pillow in the corner of the office, a number of fan's with strings attached blowing, pans of water all over the place, and at least four whiteboards with equations all over them. Sheldon was furiously writing on the fourth whiteboard some equations, his back was turned to her.

"Sheldon?" Penny said quietly.

He stopped in his tracks, and slowly turned around. "Penny?"

The tall physicist looked genuinely shocked to see her. He frowned "What are you doing here? Are you here to see Leonard?"

"Yeah, I came to see Leonard, but I also wanted to see you too." Penny said softly as she walked further into his office, she sat down on a chair.

Sheldon looked at her, then sat down at his desk and crossed his arms. "What would you like to discuss Penny?"

Penny sighed. "Sheldon, I hate there being bad feelings between us. I want us to get back to normal. I miss you."

"I see. So have you spoken to Amy or Leonard? Have you worked out your issues with the two of them this morning?"

"Ummm..no. You're the first person that I've talked to. I was on my way to see Leonard, but I thought I would talk to you first."

"So you haven't spoken to Amy?" Sheldon enquired.

"No." The truth was Penny had no idea what she was going to say to Amy. She felt angry about the Facebook message that Amy had posted, and she wasn't sure how she felt about Amy right now.

"I don't understand why you would want to talk to me first."

"Because it's easy to talk to you. You understand me. I just know that Leonard and I are going to get into a fight."

Sheldon sighed. He felt quite bad for Leonard. He had been observing him back at the apartment, and he was obviously very depressed. He was visibly upset about Penny clubbing, her telling them that they were a bunch of freaks and then totally cutting herself off for the past few days. He had not been staying at Penny's this week as per the schedule, and was spending most of his time reading in his room.

"Penny, Leonard is my best friend. Amy is my girlfriend. You have hurt both of their feelings terribly. I think you should really focus on repairing those two relationships before ours."

"I'm scared to talk to either of them."

"Leonard is the man you are going to marry, you shouldn't be afraid of talking to him."

"Sheldon, do you remember when you called Leonard to pick you up from Arizona and you didn't call Amy? You told her it was because you didn't want to look like a failure in front of her. Well, I've been feeling the same way about my life. I don't want to look like a failure in front of Leonard."

"Failure? I don't understand. You were much more of a failure in the past as a failed actress and waitress than you are right now. You are positively successful right now in comparison to how you were." Sheldon said.

Penny scowled. He was the same old rude Sheldon, with no filter on his mouth as always.

"I don't feel successful because I am not doing what I have always wanted to do. It's like your physics stuff. You had a dream of working in string theory, and then it didn't work out the way you wanted it to. That really upset you. Well I am not happy because I had to give up on my dream of being an actress. Everyone is so excited that I am a pharmaceutical sales rep, but it's not my dream. I'm not happy." Penny said flicking her nails.

"But you didn't seem happy when you were pursuing that dream also. You were complaining about the roles you were getting, lack of parts and so forth"

"I was supposed to make it big. I should have been a star by now" Penny stated.

"I guess I can kind of understand that. I think I should have had a Nobel by now, but I haven't made the breakthrough that I thought I would have by this point." Sheldon looked at Penny puzzled. "I can see why you are unhappy with your career trajectory, but why are you lashing out at Leonard? At Amy? They have nothing to do with that."

"It's just that nothing about my life is the way I pictured it in my head. I thought I would be a movie star, my friends would be other successful actors and actresses. That I would get married to another star, and we would adopt a baby from another land…." Penny said wistfully. "I found out that I didn't belong in that world. But now I am friends with a bunch of physicists and biologists, who are into things that I am not into. I feel like I don't belong in that world either. I just feel like I don't belong anywhere." Penny said with tears in her eyes.

"I know the feeling of not belonging Penny. I have always been the odd man out. But Penny, I don't really see you that way in this group. Sure you sorely lack the education the rest of us possess, with the exception of Wolowitz, but like we talked about before, you can read people and relate to people better than all of us. It's made you a key person in our social group. You are the one that everyone can talk to easily."

Sheldon leaned towards Penny, "It still puzzles me why you are lashing out at Leonard and Amy. They both care about you so much."

"I don't know Sheldon! That is part of the problem. They both love me a little too much, I can't handle it. I feel like they both put me up on a pedestal, that I can never live up to. They treat me like I'm this perfect person, and when I'm not, I feel even more like a failure!"

"Interesting" Sheldon said softly. "Well I can assure you, that neither of them have you on a pedestal anymore."

"Sheldon that's not helping!" Penny exclaimed.

"Penny, perhaps this will help. Albert Camus once said 'For if there is a sin against life, it consists perhaps not so much in despairing of life as in hoping for another life and in eluding the implacable grandeur of this life.' Maybe you should think about that."

Penny sighed. "You think I am wasting my life dreaming of what could have been instead of enjoying the life that I have been given?"

"I'm simply giving you some food for thought. I don't tell Leonard this often, but he really is kind, generous and amazing person. That fact that this man completely loves you and adores you should fill you with happiness not regret on what could have been. I really think you need to evaluate what you've been given in this life and what you want."

Penny stared at Sheldon, her eyes filled with tears. "I don't know what I want Sheldon? I'm so confused."

"Well, this is a good time to think about things then before you make a lifelong commitment to Leonard." Sheldon said.

Penny stood up, and walked towards the door. "I'm going to go talk to him right now. We definitely need to talk."

"Penny?"

"Yes Sheldon?"

"Please don't hurt my friend." Sheldon looked at her sadly, and turned back to his whiteboard.

Penny left the room, and stood in the hallway tears streaming down her face. She didn't want to hurt Leonard. She loved him. But why did she still feel so unhappy?

A/N: I don't know where this chapter came from. I wrote it intending for Penny to go talk to Leonard, and I don't know how she ended up talking to Sheldon! My mind is a fickle place these days. Next, Penny's talk with Leonard.