[TBBT] Ch: 22 [First Date with Penny] (Patreon)

The restaurant was considerably fancier than anywhere I'd expected to end up when I woke up that morning. Soft lights shone on the wooden tables, and the glasses sparkled under the chandeliers. The waiters moved quietly. In the background, a pianist played a slow tune, keeping the noise low.

Across the table, Penny was reading the menu.

Or pretending to read it.

I was having a little difficulty determining which one because I was currently struggling with a considerably more important problem.

The red dress.

She'd changed before we left, and whatever confidence I'd possessed when asking her out had taken a direct hit the moment she opened her apartment door.

The dress fitted her ridiculously well, showing enough skin to make concentrating on anything else significantly more difficult. Her blond hair fell loose around her shoulders, and every time she looked down at the menu, I caught myself looking at her before forcing my attention somewhere safer. She was unknowingly biting her lower lip as she read the menu.

Twenty-one years of advanced education had failed to prepare me for cleavage, which felt like a significant gap in my education.

Penny lowered the menu slightly and frowned at the page. "Okay, if I can't pronounce it, it's probably snails, right? Can I just point and pray?"

"As long as you don't point at the roasted duck liver, you should be perfectly safe," I said, making an effort to maintain eye contact and pointing at the duck liver option.

She grimaced. "Ew. Noted."

A waiter appeared beside our table a moment later, and after another minute of indecision, Penny settled on the sea bass.

She glanced at me after handing over her menu. "They aren't gonna add tentacles to the fish, right?"

"I can personally guarantee there will be absolutely no tentacles attached to your dinner."

"Awesome."

I ordered the steak, because enormous academic achievement hadn't prevented me from becoming extremely predictable.

The waiter poured Cabernet Sauvignon into both glasses before disappearing.

Penny lifted hers, and I did the same. We each took a sip before lowering our glasses and looking across the table at each other.

The silence lasted perhaps three seconds before becoming strangely noticeable.

I cleared my throat and leaned back slightly. "I feel I should apologize. I asked you out on this date, yet you were required to provide the transportation. I didn't get time to buy one because, as you know, I've been really busy lately."

Penny smiled over the rim of her glass before placing it down. "Sweetie, please. Any excuse to show off my glowing Check Engine light is a win for me. Plus, it's not every day I get to chauffeur a pop star."

"That's reassuring because I was beginning to question the traditional logistical responsibilities associated with first dates."

Her eyebrows rose slightly as another amused smile appeared. "Actually, may I ask you a quick question?"

"Yeah, absolutely."

Penny rested her forearms lightly against the table and studied me. "Do you always talk like this? You know... like a textbook that learned how to order wine?"

I stared at her for a second before taking a deep breath and sinking farther into my chair.

"Hell no. Seriously, it's fucking exhausting."

Penny burst out laughing.

I pointed toward her with my wineglass. "Half the time, I'm mentally rehearsing what I'm about to say before I actually say it."

Her laughter softened as she tilted her head. "You're kidding."

"I wish I was. When you spend most of your childhood around professors, researchers, university administrators, and scientists who can turn one badly phrased sentence into a forty-minute argument about terminology, you adapt pretty quickly."

Penny watched me with growing amusement while I continued.

"If you sound like a kid, they treat you like a kid. If you sound like you're defending a dissertation on string theory... they just think you're pretentious, which is a step up."

"So you're telling me you've basically been speaking Scientist since childhood?"

"That's disturbingly accurate."

"And here I just thought you were naturally weird like the guys across the hall."

"Oh, I'm naturally weird too. It's a complex recipe."

Penny laughed again before taking another sip of her wine. "Okay, that actually makes more sense."

"The worst part is that it took years to get good at it. When you're young and almost everyone around you is twice your age, you figure out pretty quickly that sounding casual gives them another reason to dismiss you. So I started talking like them."

"And now you can't stop?"

"I can stop. It just requires conscious effort because my brain defaults to professor mode whenever I'm nervous."

Her smile changed immediately.

"Nervous?"

I froze with the wineglass halfway toward my mouth.

I'd walked directly into that one.

I lowered the glass and looked at her before reluctantly admitting, "A little."

Penny looked more pleased. "Wait, you're nervous? Because you're on a date with me?"

"Please don't look so pleased about that."

"Oh, I'm enjoying it a lot."

I laughed despite myself. "Great. Apparently my humiliation is tonight’s appetizer.”

"You know, for someone who has two doctorates and knows every language, you're surprisingly easy to mess with."

"Advanced calculus offers absolutely zero defense mechanisms against beautiful blondes in red dresses."

Penny paused with the glass near her lips.

Her smile slowly widened.

I immediately took another drink because wine was either improving my decision-making or systematically destroying it.

Penny glanced at my glass. "Was that 'Professor Karl' talking?"

"No, that was just Karl. Professor Karl would have brought a graph."

She laughed just as the waiter returned carrying our food.

Dinner made everything easier.

Once there were plates between us and something to do besides stare directly at each other, the awkward edges disappeared quickly. Penny told me more about Nebraska, her family, and the small-town life she'd wanted to escape when she moved west.

She talked about riding horses, helping around the farm, high-school cheerleading, local gossip, and the bizarre ability everyone in town seemed to possess where they knew exactly what you were doing before you'd even decided whether you were doing it.

I listened more than I talked, and I found myself enjoying that more than I'd expected.

Most conversations throughout my life eventually became about my work. Someone wanted to discuss a paper, ask about patents, debate some technical issue, talk about money, or explain what I should accomplish next.

Penny didn't care about any of that unless she found something funny.

"...so I spent my fifteenth birthday arguing with a professor over metabolic efficiency in confined habitats."

"Okay, that is officially the saddest birthday story I have ever heard."

"There was cake."

"That does not save it."

"I also got unrestricted access to the high-energy laser lab right after."

She pointed her fork at me. "You are somehow making it so much worse. Birthdays are supposed to be fun and music and friends, not arguing with your professor."

I laughed and raised both hands in surrender before returning to my steak.

Somewhere between the main course and dessert, the conversation shifted toward acting.

Penny admitted she still hadn't landed anything significant, although she'd gone through enough auditions to collect an impressive number of humiliating stories.

"I did this one audition for a commercial where I had to pretend I was emotionally attached to a mop... Like, 'the mop is the only one who truly understands my pain' attached," she said.

I stopped cutting my steak. "Emotionally attached?"

"Very emotionally attached. Apparently the mop understood me when nobody else did."

"That sounds less like a cleaning-product commercial and more like the beginning of a psychological thriller."

She laughed. "Right? I didn't even get the part!"

"The mop probably had a better agent."

Penny kicked me lightly beneath the table.

Eventually her smile faded into something smaller as she moved a piece of food around her plate. "Sometimes I just... I don't know, I wonder if I'm ever actually going to get anywhere with this."

My brain immediately tried to turn her problem into a calculation. I considered competition, job stability, financial security, chances of success, and other ways to earn money. 

I stopped myself before any of that came out.

"Do you enjoy acting?"

Her answer came immediately. "Yeah. I really do."

"Then keep doing it until you don't."

Penny looked at me carefully. "That simple?"

"God no. It's going to be brutal, financially ruinous, and terrible for your self-esteem. The decision is simple. The rest is a nightmare."

She laughed quietly. "Wow. You were doing so well being supportive."

"I'm a scientist. I deal in variables. Look, if you still love it, you haven't failed just because you aren't famous at twenty-two."

Her expression softened.

I shrugged lightly. "I'm twenty-one, and I spent my whole life treating this age like a deadline to cure a disease or invent a new power source. Turns out, setting arbitrary deadlines is a great way to be miserable."

Penny stared at me. "Karl, you have two doctorates, hit songs, and girls literally chase you down the street."

"Exactly, and I still don't know what the hell I'm doing half the time."

That made her laugh hard enough that several people nearby glanced toward us.

I found that I really liked making her laugh.

By the time dessert arrived, Penny had abandoned whatever careful first-date posture she'd started with. One heel had slipped halfway off beneath the table, she'd stolen a bite from my chocolate cake without asking, and somehow the conversation had moved toward television.

"So you seriously don't watch much TV?" she asked.

"I watch television."

"That sounded suspiciously defensive."

"I've been busy."

"You're always busy."

"Which explains why I don't watch much television."

Penny pointed her dessert fork toward me. "Okay, pop quiz. America's Next Top Model?"

"I know what it is."

"Not what I asked."

"I've seen parts of it."

Her eyes narrowed. "Parts?"

"It usually happened because somebody else was watching."

"You're judging me."

"I haven't said anything."

"You've got your science face."

"I don't have a science face."

"You absolutely have a science face."

I shook my head and took another bite of cake. "For the record, I understand the appeal."

Penny leaned forward. "Really?"

"Beautiful women competing to become professional models isn't exactly a difficult concept to appreciate."

She laughed. "There it is."

I studied her for a moment before adding, "Although, honestly, I think you could give most of them a run for their money."

Penny's expression changed.

The fork stopped halfway toward her mouth.

"Wait, you think I could be on America's Next Top Model?"

“I think Tyra Banks would start reconsidering the competition.”

A slow smile spread across her face. "Are you trying to get lucky tonight?"

"I thought I was giving an objective visual assessment."

"Professor Karl again?"

"Professor Karl would probably have charts."

Penny laughed and shook her head. "God, you're such a dork."

"An extremely observant dork."

She smiled into her wineglass, and judging by the faint color appearing in her cheeks, I decided the objective visual assessment had been received reasonably well.

When the bill arrived, I picked it up before Penny could reach toward it.

She narrowed her eyes. "Don't you dare make this weird because I drove."

"I asked you out. I'm paying."

"Karl, this place probably charges twenty bucks just to look at the bread."

"Then millions of teenagers currently buying my songs on iTunes can pay for your sea bass."

Penny stared at me for half a second before laughing. "You know, using your ridiculous pop-star wealth to impress a girl is a really cheap tactic."

"Is it working?"

"...A little bit."

I smiled and slipped my card into the folder.

Penny watched me before leaning back in her chair. "Fine. But next time, I pick the place. And it's gonna be burgers, unless I book a national commercial between now and then."

My hand paused.

I looked up.

"Next time?"

Penny realized what she'd said almost immediately.

For perhaps the first time that evening, she looked genuinely embarrassed. It lasted barely a second before she lifted her chin and recovered.

"Yeah. Assuming you don't screw this up between now and then."

A smile slowly spread across my face. "I'll schedule several meetings with my advisors."

She kicked me lightly beneath the table again.

After paying, we walked through the restaurant and stepped outside into the cooler Pasadena night.

Penny moved beside me, rubbing her bare arms slightly as the evening air hit her skin. I took off my jacket and held it toward her.

She looked at the jacket before raising her eyes toward me. "Fancy restaurant, expensive wine, and the jacket move? Have you been reading Cosmo?"

"I watched movies."

"That explains everything."

She slipped into the jacket anyway.

It was oversized on her, with the sleeves reaching past her wrists, and for reasons I wasn't interested in analyzing too deeply, seeing Penny walking beside me in my jacket did something pleasant and slightly stupid to my chest.

We started toward the parking lot at an unusually slow pace, and neither of us seemed particularly interested in correcting it.

For once, my brain wasn't running through music sales. I was thinking about Penny walking beside me after our first actual date, wearing my jacket and occasionally bumping her shoulder against mine.

For someone who'd spent most of his life measuring progress through accomplishments, I was beginning to suspect there were considerably better ways to measure certain things.

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Will he get lucky tonight? Remember, this is S1 Penny. I already know the result, still... 😬😬