The Misanthrope
Copyright© 2025 by Drabbles
Chapter 5: The Mathematics of Connection
Three weeks passed like a slow hemorrhage.
Henry returned to his routines with the grim determination of a man performing penance. He woke at 5:47, showered for exactly twelve minutes, ate his measured breakfast. He arrived at work at 7:15, left at 6:30, spoke only when necessary. He was a model of efficiency, a machine of productivity, billing more hours than seemed humanly possible because he’d eliminated everything human from his life.
Again.
At work, he and Tanya were polite strangers. They passed each other in hallways with careful nods. They rode the elevator in silence, Tanya staring at her phone, Henry staring at the floor numbers. Once, their hands brushed reaching for the same door handle, and Henry jerked back like he’d been burned. Tanya’s expression flickered—hurt, maybe, or anger—but she smoothed it away quickly, held the door open for him with professional courtesy.
“Thank you,” he said.
“You’re welcome, Dr. Gordon.”
Dr. Gordon. Not Henry. The formality was a wall between them, and Henry told himself he was grateful for it.
The rumors at work died down. Without any evidence of ongoing impropriety, the gossip moved on to other targets, other scandals. Henry should have felt relieved. Instead, he felt erased, like the brief period when he’d been connected to another human being had been a hallucination, a temporary glitch in his carefully maintained isolation.
His apartment was too quiet. He tried listening to music—classical, like he’d told Tanya he preferred—but it felt performative, like he was trying to be the person she’d thought he was rather than the person he actually was. He tried reading, but the words blurred together. He tried working from home in the evenings, but even his legendary focus had abandoned him.
He kept thinking about the kiss.
It had been so brief, so gentle. Tanya’s lips soft against his, her hands light on his shoulders. The way his body had responded without his permission, his hands finding her waist, pulling her closer. For five seconds—maybe less—he’d felt alive in a way he hadn’t since Allison died.
And then the guilt had crushed him, and he’d let Tanya walk away, and now it was over.
This was better. This was right. He didn’t deserve happiness. He didn’t deserve Tanya’s warmth, her laughter, her devastating kindness. He’d failed the one person he’d promised to protect, and the universe had given him exactly what he’d earned: a life of careful, controlled emptiness.
Except it didn’t feel like what he’d earned. It felt like what he was choosing. And that was somehow worse.
On a Thursday evening, three weeks and two days after the kiss, Henry was sitting on his couch with a glass of whiskey he wasn’t drinking, staring at the wall where Allison’s favorite painting used to hang. He’d taken it down two years ago, unable to bear the way it reminded him of her laugh, the way she’d dragged him to the gallery, insisting he needed more art in his life.
“You’re too practical,” she’d said, linking her arm through his. “Everything doesn’t have to be functional. Sometimes things can just be beautiful.”
He’d bought her the painting that day—an abstract piece in blues and grays that she said reminded her of Lake Michigan in winter. She’d hung it in the living room, and every time he looked at it, he thought of her.
Now the wall was blank, and Henry couldn’t remember why he’d thought that was better.
The knock on his door was so unexpected that at first he thought he’d imagined it. No one came to his apartment. No one except—
He opened the door, and Tanya was standing there.
She wasn’t wearing her yellow coat. She was in jeans and a dark sweater, her hair loose around her shoulders, and her expression was nothing like the warm, open friendliness he’d grown accustomed to. She looked angry. No—she looked furious.
“Tanya—”
“Three weeks,” she said, her voice tight. “Three weeks, Henry. I put myself out there. I told you how I felt. I kissed you, and you kissed me back, and then—nothing. Radio silence. Do you have any idea how humiliating that is?”
Henry stood in the doorway, frozen. “I—”
“Was it that awful? The kiss? Did I completely misread everything? Because I thought—” Her voice cracked slightly. “I thought we had something. I thought you felt it too. But apparently I was wrong, and you couldn’t even be bothered to tell me that. You just avoided me. Like I’m some embarrassing mistake you’re trying to forget.”
“That’s not—”
“Then what is it?” She stepped closer, and Henry could see that her eyes were bright with unshed tears. “What is it, Henry? Because I’ve been driving myself crazy trying to figure out what I did wrong. Was I too forward? Too pushy? Did I push you too fast? I know you’re still grieving, I know it’s complicated, but I thought—” She stopped, wrapped her arms around herself. “I thought you liked me too.”
“I do,” Henry said, the words bursting out of him. “I do like you. I—”
“Then why didn’t you call?”
“I didn’t have your number.”
Tanya stopped. Blinked. “What?”
“You told me to call you. But I didn’t have your number. I’d deleted the text thread. I assumed you were—” He swallowed hard. “I assumed you were letting me down gently. You work at the firm. You know where I live. If you really wanted me to contact you, I thought you would have been more direct. So I thought the ‘call me’ was just ... a polite way to end things.”
Tanya stared at him. “You didn’t have my number.”
“No.”
“So you just ... what? Assumed I didn’t want to hear from you?”
“Yes.”
“Henry.” She pressed her hands to her face. “Henry, when a woman tells you to call her after she kisses you, she’s not letting you down gently. She’s asking you to pursue her. To show that you want this too. To come find her and ask for her number and—” She stopped, and suddenly she was laughing. Not the warm, easy laugh he was used to, but something slightly hysterical. “Oh my god. You really didn’t know.”
“I don’t—” Henry felt lost, like he was trying to navigate without a map. “I don’t understand these things. Social cues. I never have. Allison used to—” He stopped, the name catching in his throat. “She used to translate for me. Tell me what people really meant when they said things. I’m not good at subtext.”
“It wasn’t subtext, Henry. I kissed you. That’s pretty clear text.”
“And then you left. That seemed clear too.”
Tanya lowered her hands, and her expression had softened from anger to something more complicated—exasperation mixed with tenderness mixed with disbelief. “I left because I was terrified. Because I’d just kissed a man who’s been emotionally unavailable for five years, and I didn’t know if you’d kissed me back because you wanted to or because you were too shocked to pull away. I left because I needed you to make the next move. To show me that this wasn’t just me projecting onto someone who was being kind to me.”
“I wasn’t just being kind.”
“I know that now. But I didn’t know it then. And these past three weeks—” Her voice wavered. “These past three weeks have been awful. Seeing you at work, having you look through me like I’m invisible. I thought I’d ruined everything. I thought I’d lost you as a friend because I wanted more.”
Henry stepped back from the doorway. “Come in. Please.”
Tanya hesitated, then walked past him into the apartment. She looked around, and Henry saw her notice the blank wall where the painting had been, the empty space on the bookshelf where Allison’s collection of poetry had sat.
“You’ve been taking things down,” she said quietly.
“Some things. Not enough.” Henry closed the door, leaned against it. “I’ve been thinking about what you said. About moving forward not meaning forgetting. But I don’t know how to do that. I don’t know how to—” He gestured helplessly. “How to be a person who gets to be happy. Who gets to want things.”
“Why not?”
“Because I failed her. Because I made the wrong choice, and she died, and I don’t get to just move on from that. I don’t get to fall for someone else and pretend like—”
“Like what? Like you’re human? Like you deserve a life?” Tanya turned to face him fully. “Henry, you made an impossible choice with incomplete information. You did what you were trained to do. And yes, the outcome was devastating. But you can’t punish yourself forever. That’s not loyalty. That’s just ... slow suicide.”
“I don’t know how to stop.”