Chapter 25: Flipping the Table
Evening
The Cooper Family Home
"Shelly, guess who's coming over tomorrow?"
Mary met Sheldon at the door, barely containing her excitement. "Paige Swanson! Isn't that wonderful?"
"Paige is not my friend."
Sheldon's expression curdled immediately.
"What?" Mary's excitement dropped a notch. "But you two are in Dr. Campbell's class together—"
"We attend the same lectures," Sheldon said, with the precision of someone drawing a legal boundary. "That makes us fellow students at best. It does not make us friends. It certainly does not make her someone I want in this house."
"Shelly." Mary had a general sense of why, but she genuinely wanted this visit to happen. She hadn't encountered another family in a remotely similar situation in all of Sheldon's ten years, and Paige's mother had seemed warm and grounded on the phone. She needed to talk to someone who understood.
"Maybe you and Paige could be like Adam and Juno," Mary tried.
"Adam and Juno are friends," Sheldon said. "Paige is not a friend. She is not going to become a friend. I don't enjoy her company and I see no reason to pretend otherwise."
Mary went quiet.
Note to self, she thought. Never use Adam and Juno as an example again. And this Paige must be something special, or Sheldon wouldn't be this worked up.
Sheldon was direct to a fault, but he was also, at his core, a mama's boy. Mary had ten years of practice finding the right angle. She mentioned, quietly and without drama, that she didn't have many friends either. That raising a child like Sheldon had been beautiful and also isolating, and that she'd been hoping to talk with someone who truly understood.
She didn't push. She said if Sheldon really didn't want this visit, she wouldn't force it.
Sheldon looked at her face for a long moment.
"I'll think about it," he said finally.
Mary called Paige's family that evening.
The Next Afternoon
Ding-dong.
Mary had dressed up. Her best smile was ready before she even touched the door handle.
She opened it.
"Adam. Juno." The smile stayed in place through sheer force of will. "I wasn't expecting you two."
"We heard Paige was coming over," Adam said pleasantly. "We thought we'd stop by. Moral support. Peacekeeping, if necessary." He paused. "Mostly joking about that last part."
Mary looked at them both, made a rapid calculation, and stepped back. "Sheldon's in his room."
Sheldon was in front of his bedroom mirror, adjusting his bow tie with the focused dissatisfaction of someone preparing for a very important meeting they would have preferred to cancel.
He looked over when Adam and Juno appeared in the doorway.
"What are you doing here?"
"Came to see how you're holding up," Adam said. "That's what friends do."
Juno glanced sideways at Adam with an expression that communicated several things at once, none of which she said out loud.
Sheldon looked at them both and experienced something he didn't have a clean category for yet. Something warm and slightly uncomfortable at the same time, like a system running a process it wasn't fully designed for.
He was, objectively, grateful they were here.
He wasn't going to say that out loud.
The situation with Paige had shaken him more than he'd admitted to anyone. His entire self-concept rested on the certainty that his intelligence was in a category essentially by itself. Einstein. Newton. Hawking. And then, at a significant distance, everyone else.
Paige Swanson had walked into Dr. Campbell's lecture hall, sat in his seat, and proceeded to ask questions that left him groping for answers he should have had. She was a month younger than him. She was faster in certain areas of physics than he was, which he had no framework for processing.
His grandmother had called it jealousy. He still didn't think that was precisely right. Whatever it was, it had been sitting in his chest for days like an unresolved equation.
"How are you feeling?" Juno asked.
"I'm suppressing it," Sheldon said. "It's the most logical approach available to me given that I don't have Vulcan mental discipline." He straightened his bow tie one final time. "Don't be alarmed if I seem distant this afternoon."
"We won't," Adam said.
"Shelly! They're here!"
Sheldon took a slow breath, squared his shoulders, and walked out to the living room with the careful posture of someone approaching a negotiation.
The living room had filled up. Paige's parents were already settled on the couch with Mary and George Sr. Missy and George Jr. had immediately swept Paige's older sister toward the backyard.
Paige herself stood near the fireplace in a yellow cardigan, looking completely relaxed.
"Hi, Sheldon!" She stepped forward and hugged him.
Sheldon stood with his arms at his sides and the expression of a man experiencing something he had not consented to.
After Mary had introduced everyone and the adults had settled into their own conversation, Adam, Juno, Sheldon, and Paige drifted toward Sheldon's bedroom.
Sheldon had prepared an agenda. He announced it without inflection.
"I've organized a schedule for the next few hours. First, I'll show you around the room. Then we'll play a board game. If time permits, you may look at my model train collection, but under no circumstances should you touch anything."
"We're all friends here, Sheldon," Adam said easily. "No need for a formal schedule." He turned to Paige. "I'm Adam. This is Juno. Good to meet you."
Paige looked at him.
Adam held the smile and felt something shift slightly in his confidence. Her eyes had a quality that reminded him of Juno — that particular kind of attention that processed more than you'd offered.
"Do you play chess?" she asked.
"Sure," Adam said.
Paige picked up Sheldon's chessboard from the shelf and set it up on the desk with efficient, practiced movements.
Juno sat back and watched with quiet amusement.
Adam sat down across from Paige.
Several minutes later, Paige looked at the board. "Checkmate." She clapped her hands once. "Sheldon? Your turn?"
Adam sat very still.
The system had given him nothing. Not a flicker.
Sheldon took Adam's seat. He and Paige started playing, and within two moves had drifted into a conversation about quantum field theory that left the board largely forgotten.
Juno watched them with genuine interest.
Adam stared at the chessboard.
Nothing. Not even 0.001.
A short while later, Sheldon looked at the position on the board, looked at Paige, looked back at the board, and flipped the table.
Not metaphorically.
The chessboard, the pieces, and a small cup of pencils went in separate directions.
End of Chapter 25
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