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Sheldon takes another bite of his apple, letting his teeth sink deep into its skin, and holds it there in his mouth like a pig fresh after a turn on the spit. He scratches out the clue for sixty one across.
The lunchroom is empty but for him, as it’s well past normal meal time. He knows the rally in the gym is getting ready to burst from the seams, the clock reading half past three. The more time he’s got here, finishing a week old crossword left behind by one of his colleagues, and letting his mind clear up, the better.
There’s this part of his job that seems unrelated to the position he’d originally interviewed for where he has to speak in public and inspire young minds. It’s not something without merit or reason, sure, so he can never say no. But it’s the last thing you want to be doing Friday afternoon before a big game.
If it weren’t for how these kids stare at him from the bleachers, face all full of hope and blue paint, maybe he’d have quit already. The radio interviews like he’s a bigwig calling plays on ESPN or the half-time one-sided yelling matches in the locker room, he’s gotten good at it as anyone would with enough practice, all were skills he developed with plenty of practice over the years even though they were definitely not on the list of skills he’d had on his resume.
None of this was on his resume, though. If you want to get honest about it, in another life he would be working in math or science, studying the universe’s secrets.
If he’s even more honest, maybe he’s still doing that and maybe this way’s harder.
###
“Daddy, how do you know when you’re in love?”
“Well, you’ve met your Mama, haven’t you?” Sheldon grins over a plate of over-easy eggs.
Mary Louise’s face scrunches up and she gives her father a look of annoyance. “That’s not what I meant and you know it. How do you know if it’s the real thing? What they write books about and what Taylor Swift sings about.”
“Well,” Sheldon sets down his fork and sits up straighter. “I don’t listen to Taylor Shift—”
“—Swift—”
“—Swift,” he corrects with a small smirk. “But I wasn’t joking about your mama. That’s how I knew I was in love, when I met her.”
Mary Louise doesn’t react straightaway, but her eyes soften and her posture sways in a way that Sheldon knows means she’s stirred. She doesn’t say anything but her expression all but begs for the full story, one that he doesn’t usually tell. He’s not usually one for much emotion or sentimentality, but some things transcend his normal, brusque demeanor.
“My first coaching job, at some rundown high school in nowhere south Nebraska, I lived in this rundown apartment. It only ran hot water from between sun up til six in the morning. The local train was right next door, too, so if I wasn’t up for the shower I would be up for that.” Sheldon takes a deep, serious breath, clearly not relishing the memory. “One day I was already running late for work, ‘cause of the shower running out of water quicker than usual.”
Sheldon’s face changes, then, when he thinks over the specifics. Remembering the moment as if he were still living it, khakis freshly pressed, Meridian Mustangs cap keeping the blistering sun out of his eyes.
“My car wouldn’t start. At that point I hadn’t driven much at all. I still try not to, you know, driving’s not really for me. I didn’t know the first thing about car maintenance and didn’t have the money to buy a new car or even call a cab, it being one of my first jobs right out of UT. So I’ve got the hood up and am basically trying to feel around like it’s a science project gone awry. I know enough of that so maybe it’ll translate.”
“Did it?
“Not at all. But short of walking there wasn’t much I could do. That is until your mama came along and rescued me.” Sheldon shakes his head a touch and almost squints at the memory on instinct. The sun reflecting off of Penny’s hair had nearly blinded him. “She walked out of the building and saw me struggling. Came over, asked if I needed a hand, politely, before she leaned in and fixed the transmission. Only took her a minute or two, some bolt was loose. I still don’t know what was wrong. But she had it up and ready to drive with enough time to spare that I hadn’t even missed first period.”
“And that’s when you knew? Then?”
“I didn’t, not really. Turns out we’d been living door to door from each other for almost a year without ever speaking. She was a waitress in town and kept odd hours and I was spending so much time trying to get my team to win which was almost impossible.”
Mary Louise interrupts, confused. “So when did you know?”
“It’s not a switch, Mary Lou. I didn’t drive to school thinking, ‘Man, alive. I’m in love.’ In fact, you probably wouldn’t recognize me as I am, now. I had no time for that business. Relationships. I had a five year plan to finish and a ten year plan to follow that up with. I might’ve gone back to school for mathematics or physics if I hadn’t fell in love with football. And I wouldn’t have done that if not for your mother. Before then, it was just something I knew how to do that would get me a steady teaching job in a good high school. After those first few years with Penny, I was finally able to admit it was my passion and pursued it full time.”
“You still didn’t answer my question.”
“Like I said, no switch was flipped. Love isn’t something you realize, it’s something you work at. Your mother saved me from being late for work that day. She saved me later from a life of loneliness and solemnity. She still saves me, every time I go to sleep at night and she lies down next to me. Loving someone ain’t as easy as saying she makes the best eggs in West Texas and has a smile that lights up a room. It’s about how she forces me to be the greatest version of myself. I’m sure that without having met her when I did, not knowing that kind of love and kindness, I would be a colder, sadder man.”
Sheldon picks his fork back up, returning to his lukewarm eggs with a gleam in his eyes.
“Scariest of all, we’d have never met you.”
Mary Louise smiles.
###
“Ms. Coach, can I ask you something about football?” Michael calls from the opposite side of the hallway, over the sound of students filtering towards the pep rally.
“Ain’t you supposed to say ‘even though you’re not coach and don’t know as much about football’ after that, Mike?” Penny smirks.
“No, ma’am. I don’t have a death wish.”
“Smart man,” Penny beams, waving him over towards her office where she’s leaned against the door jamb. “Come on in, but make it quick. I want some of Mona’s spirit brownies before the whole school gets in there or else all the good ones will be gone.”
Michael shuffles into Penny’s small office, sitting in the wooden chair opposite her desk.
“What can I do for you today?”
“How can you tell when you’re in love with someone?” he asks, shyly.
“I thought this was about football?” Penny’s head leans to the side, slightly.
He blushes and Penny nods for him to shut the door some to muffle the noise of the hallway and give them some privacy.
“How can you tell when you’re in love with someone,” Penny repeats. “That’s a tough question.”
“How did you know?” Michael adds, quietly, looking at the picture of Sheldon, Mary Lou, and herself on her desk next to her stapler.
“Well, not to get inappropriate for a school counselor to student conversation, but part of me knew first time I saw Coach Cooper in khaki shorts from the back.”
Michael can barely keep in a chuckle that bubbles up from his chest, his mouth gapes. Mrs. Cooper has never been one to keep her thoughts to herself, no matter how off the wall they might be, but that was an overshare even for her.
“Beyond that, though. There was a time not long after I’d first met him and we’d gone out on a few dates that we decided to stay in. I made him,” she pauses, thinking back to it. “I made him chicken parmesan with split peas and green beans. He ate all the greens,” she smiles as though she’s bragging about a small child clearing his plate for the first time. “You’d be surprised how many times I’ve made a meal for someone only for them to leave most of them on the plate. It’s a little thing, even if someone only does it once or twice it’s no problem, but early on or every time. It speaks to their personality, I think, whether they like what you like or don’t have the kindness to eat something they don’t love because they care about your time and your feelings.”
“So you fell in love with Coach because he ate some peas?”
Penny breathes a sigh and shuts her eyes. “No, it’s probably even sillier. After I made dinner and went to wash the dishes I’d borrowed from his cabinets, when I put them to the side, he stood up and just started drying them. Like it was second nature, even kept our conversation going without a hiccup. I don’t remember what we were talking about because I still remember having to catch my breath. I just,” Penny catches herself and swallows. She tries to dial back the emotion, feeling a little too serious and exposed given the circumstances. “I knew he was who I wanted to spend the rest of my life with, washing dishes next to.”
Michael breathes out a short burst of air, clearly amused but not unkindly. “So you’re saying eat my vegetables?”
Penny laughs. “And if that fails, always offer to help with the dishes.”
“Thanks, I’ll let you get ready for the rally. Don’t want to miss those brownies!”
Penny grins. “If you’ve still got questions about love or football or both, come back and see me any time, Mike.”
He smiles and nods, ducking out the door without another word.
Penny straightens the picture frame on her desk and sighs again. She shakes her mouse and googles chicken parmesan recipes.
It’s been twenty minutes before she realizes the time and runs off to the pep rally, by the time she politely sneaks in during the principals opening remarks, most of the gymnasium is full.
All the brownies are gone.
###
When Mary Lou is born, Sheldon spends the full thirty-six hours in the hospital during labor. He gets less sleep than Penny because he didn’t get drugs, but he figures it was the least he could do considering the incomparable amount of pain his wife is in.
On the third day, his mother would say, God created the oceans, the land, and the vegetables.
On that third day, his wife creates Mary Louise Cooper.
She doesn’t cry much, past the initial delivery. At first it scares them both and took some examination of breathing and general health by the doctors and nurses, but it’s ruled as an uncommon, perfectly fine outcome. Once she arrives home, however, it is almost as though she’d spent her entire time as the amazing non-crying baby in the hospital, just to save up lung capacity for later.
She cries for days. Sheldon misses half a day of work because the one lapse in her crying jag overlapped with when he’s due in and he sleeps through two different alarms.
There’s a moment, somewhere around the second straight week of near-constant screaming, that they both hit a wall. Sheldon walks in on Penny rocking Mary Louise, hoping to calm her even slightly, and sees her mirroring her daughter’s sobs with gusto.
For some reason, the intimacy of the image snaps something deep, deep down in him and he cries, too. He walks over to where they’re sitting on an armchair, practically screaming at one another with misery, and simply exists in the space. Until that point, all the love he feels for Penny is personal and private, but now that he’s not just dealing with a pregnant stomach and not just dealing with a newborn baby.
He soaks in that this baby is a person with thoughts and feelings as complex as any number of things in this universe. As upset as they both are, as exhausted and spent, as desperate and panicked, the only thing that he feels is love. All-powerful, mind, body, and soul-crippling love. It’s as though he’s been pretending to be modest about his feelings for Penny and Mary Lou up until this point because once the floodgates are open, he’s not even experiencing things on the same level as normal love anymore.
In that dark room, on an old burgundy armchair, all three openly decided to tap into their deepest feelings for each other and scream about them until they can’t anymore. It is as if their bodies aren’t even there and he is looking at them both through thought and emotion only.
It’s pretty out there and once he and Penny go hoarse from crying they just stare into space, Sheldon slumps over her knee, sitting at her feet, on the floor beside the armchair. He wills Penny to continue to be stronger than he is in those last remaining moments of pre-blackout exhaustion because he’s sure he would’ve fallen asleep with Mary Lou still in his arms. Okay with supervision, but a scary prospect if everyone sleeps.
Before that happens, however, he realizes his ears are ringing and there’s actually a deafening silence in the room. He’s unsure of how long it’s been so, but before he can try and figure it, Penny nudges his back. She’s still wide awake, somehow, like a real-life superhero, as she nods her head in their daughter’s direction.
Their daughter.
Sheldon pulls himself to his knees and blinks at where she’s held, sleeping, quiet and still, in Penny’s arms. There’s a small sound, like a yawn or a sigh, and then.
Mary Louise smiles.
###
Sheldon’s windbreaker is off before he’s more than ten paces in the door. His sunglasses are left askew on a side table. He makes a bee line straight for the kitchen, to discover Penny stirring a pot of tomato sauce in between flipping chicken breasts over in a bowl of bread crumbs. The radio blares top 40 hits as she sways her hips around playfully.
“You’re making chicken parmesan? My favorite,” Sheldon smiles, wrapping himself awkwardly against Penny’s back. Hugging her at that angle with the added height distance is more funny than romantic. She turns around, keeping her somewhat dirty hands splayed out to avoid getting any sauce or crumbs on his shirt.
“I really love you, you know,” Penny says fiercely, her chin digs into Sheldon’s upper body.
“I do know that. I love you, too.”
Penny goes up on her toes, gives him a swift peck on the lips and then bumps his front with her hip. “Now, shoo. I’ve got dinner to finish.”
“Can I help with anything? Set the table, cut some vegetables?” Sheldon asks.
Penny takes a second to allow a big grin overtake her face. “There are green beans in the fridge. You can wash them so they’re ready for later.”
“Perfect!”
The pair continues to prepare the meal before Sheldon realizes Mary Louise is still not home. “Where’s Mary Lou? She not joining us?”
“She’s out with a boy, meeting up with a group after the rally, for dinner and a movie.”
Sheldon sets down the strainer, concerned. “She’s out with a boy?”
“Yes, she said she likes him but they’ve only hung out once or twice.”
“They’ve gone out before?” Sheldon bristles.
“It’s fine. You know the gang she hangs out with. None of them are bad news. Y’all are Texas babies. Hardly anybody’s getting pregnant in a cornfield around here.”
“I had a conversation not ten hours ago about what falling in love was like. Something tells me she’s a little bit past just drinking soda pop and watching Rachel McAndrews movies!”
“Rachel McAdams! They’re Rachel McAdams movies. And some of them aren’t even that romantic, for your information.” Penny gives him a joking sneer. “What’s so wrong if she goes on a date with some sweet guy from her chemistry class? The geeks hardly ever get laid in high school.”
Sheldon squints at her. “I was a high school nerd, I'll have you know. President of the BBB.”
“BBB?”
“Bunsen Burner Bunch. We met Thursdays after class to test what different liquids and solids looked like when changing states. Then we made s’mores.”
Penny chuckles. “Not the guys I’m worried about. Plus if they are anything like you, then I’m sure she’s in good hands.” She leans up and pecks another kiss on his lips before turning back to finish covering the chicken with cheese.
“So long as it’s none of my players, really. That would be the true waking nightmare scenario.”
As if only enlightened to the possibility at that moment, Penny blanches, and closes her eyes. “Um. Wait.”
“Wait what?” Sheldon asks. At the look of horror growing on her face, he repeats himself, but frantically. “Wait. What?”
“I actually had a similar talk about love with one of your players. It might have been a coincidence. Maybe. Hopefully it was a coincidence. They’re teenagers, everyone’s falling in love with someone, right?” Penny forces a choked laugh.
“Which one? Which one? Tell me it’s Biddle, I’ll go looking for them in our truck right now. Up and down the streets. Screaming out their names.”
“That’s ridiculous. You are not doing that. I doubt anything even came of it. They’re both sweet innocent kids who probably just want to go steady. Give it a year or two before you really worry about anything happening.”
“You still haven’t said who, I’m going to lose my mind.”
“Michael Stratford.” Penny’s mouth is a hard, straight line. She knows it’s not what any father wants to hear, that their daughter is nearly a grown woman with feelings and agency to go make out with the Biddles of the world, but if you’re going to hear she’s dating someone, Statford is still a top tier pick.
Sheldon doesn’t react much, just stands still and nods, arms akimbo. “She’s our baby, Penny. Now she’s out there with some guy.”
“Some guy is the same guy that you helped study for algebra last month because you were afraid he’d flunk a test and lose his spot on the team. Not exactly the stuff of ‘dating my daughter’ nightmares.”
Sheldon shakes his head, going back to shaking the strainer one last time before emptying it of green beans. “I just want her to stay our little girl. I don’t want to lose her.”
“You’re not gonna lose her. She asked you about love. She asked you about love.”
“So?”
“So you’re about the most prickly pear there ever was about the subject. I would kill someone before they ever hurt you, but that’s the goddamn truth. You’re a very taciturn guy with that stuff. I love you, it’s part of you, I don’t dislike you for it, but it definitely affects the way I talk to you about things. It certainly isn’t a secret to Mary Lou that you might give some great kick in the butt speeches next to a football field, but you don’t really bring that home with you. Not all the time, least. I really like you, Sheldon, and I hardly ever ask you about that. Imagine how much she must adore the heck out of you to be so forward about it. She knows that you know about it, even though you never talk about it. That means she knows how much you adore her. Probably because she loves you just as hard in return.”
“I highly doubt she could love me as much as I love her.” Penny hears a hitch in his breath and turns her eyes up to see him biting back tears. “I don’t talk about it because it’s too much. Both of you. It’s so all consuming, it scares me a little. When she asked me about it earlier, I could barely keep from getting choked up. I thought I loved science growing up and then football when I grew up some more, but I had no idea til I met you two.”
Penny kisses him a third time, longer than the rest, tilting her head and pulling him towards her to capture his mouth more fully with hers.
When they pull apart, Sheldon wipes the wetness off his cheek with the back of his right hand. “I could go the rest of my life without a lick of science or another game of football before I’d ever be able to make it a day without you.”
“Don’t you dare, Coach. This town would sooner burn me on a goal post.”
“Well, if my hands are tied.”
Penny gives him another short kiss before spinning around to put the chicken in the oven, set the timer, and throw the green beans into a crock pot. “We’ve got a little under an hour to kill and Mary won’t be back til real late.”
Sheldon cringes. “Ugh, don’t tell me that.”
“Sheldon.”
He follows her out of the kitchen, anyway.
###
After the bedroom, after the dinner, after watching two thirds of a rerun of a Will Ferrell movie on cable, they go back to clean the kitchen.
Mary walks in quietly, unsure if she’ll be waking them, and holds the screen door so it doesn’t slam shut like it normally does. She drops her things on a chair by the living room sofa and heads towards her bedroom.
She doesn’t hear her parents until she’s passing by the kitchen and sees them standing side by side over the sink, washing and drying the dishes in tandem.
“Do you remember that black Tracer I had?”
Penny responds at first with just a small giggle. "The one that always broke down? That thing was just a money pit. You’re lucky you knew a trained mechanic or you would’ve been paying three times what it the car cost to buy in repair payments alone.”
“I should’ve kept that car. It’s the reason we met. For old time’s sake.”
“Sheldon, sweetie, I say this lovingly because I, too, treasure that the Tracer brought us together some two decades ago. That car was a piece of shit. I’m glad it’s gone, rusting up some junk yard in Eastern Oklahoma as we speak.”
Sheldon doesn’t say anything in response but he does lightly bump his hip against hers, jokingly antagonistic. Penny laughs, deep and breathless, before she lays her head against his arm.
She passes another plate to Sheldon without moving her head from beside his shoulder.
Mary Louise smiles.