A Brush with Love(3)
With that, Harper came back to earth, and her torso shot up from the floor. The man let out a soft groan as his head jolted from her chest and landed awkwardly in her lap. She scrambled to sit up on her knees as he disentangled himself from her. At the same time, Thu crouched down, pretending to drape a comforting arm across Harper’s shoulders as she whispered, “Holy shit, he’s hot.”
Harper whipped her head to look at her friend, eliciting another wave of throbbing pain through her skull. Massaging her temple with one hand, she pushed Thu away with the other.
“Are you okay?” the man repeated, looking at her with genuine concern. Seeing him head-on made Harper feel like her heart was throwing confetti around her chest.
Okay. Wow. He’s absolutely gorgeous. Cool.
She squeezed her eyes shut and took a steadying breath. No one actually looked that good; she must be hallucinating.
But, opening her eyes, it was confirmed with a red alert of embarrassment that no, she wasn’t seeing things, and yes, the man she’d body-slammed was, in fact, as good-looking as he’d first appeared.
His hair had that perfectly mussed look that begged her fingers to run themselves through it. His jaw and cheekbones could cut glass, and the tiniest hint of stubble dusted his skin. Where she expected to see an equally chiseled nose was one that was a touch big, the tip forming an adorable, rounded bulb. It was a nose that could easily look goofy on a softer face, but it worked to ease the sharpness of his other features just enough to create an endearing and approachable quality.
Harper continued to stare at him, now unable to look away. She must have really hurt her head.
“I … I fell down the stairs,” she explained, surveying the scene around her. Thu let out a snort that she disguised as a distressed sob.
The stranger cocked a lopsided grin at Harper, a small dimple peeking out of one cheek. The urge to touch him struck her again.
“I saw. It was hard to miss if I’m being honest,” he said with the slightest hint of teasing. “But seriously, are you all right?”
Harper opened her mouth but wasn’t sure of the right words to explain that she’d never felt this disoriented in her entire life, dazed and tongue-tied by his face, of all things.
He studied her carefully, and her cheeks flushed to the point of discomfort. Harper pushed herself to standing and dusted off the weird powder from her scrubs. Glancing around for its source, her stomach dropped as she realized what she’d done. Not two feet away, a shattered stone model of a patient’s dentition littered the ground.
One of the trickiest parts of dentistry was taking a good impression of a patient’s upper and lower teeth. A dentist had to work quickly to mix alginate powder to the perfect rubbery consistency, then jam it into the patient’s open mouth and mold it around their teeth, often causing them to gag and dry heave in the process—throw up was not a rarity in the whole ordeal.
It was pure torture for everyone involved, and a task that often took many tries for students to master before they had a workable mold, much to the dismay of the patient. The mold would then be taken to the wet lab for setting into stone, which was a bitch of a process itself. All in all, models were an absolute pain in the ass to make and something you guarded with your life if done well.
Harper’s eyes widened in horror, and her gaze snapped to the man she’d crashed into. He was similarly dusting himself off, as he looked with absolute misery at the massacre of his project. She realized with an even stronger pang of guilt that, based on the graduation year embroidered above the breast pocket of his scrubs, he was a first-year student. She’d destroyed something that took even seasoned seniors countless tries to get right, let alone someone newly learning the technique.
“I’m so sorry!” she blurted out, scurrying over to the fragments to see if anything was salvageable. Thu moved with her, picking up the pieces farther down the hall.
“I slipped and—and everything is soaking wet, and—and—rain! So much rain! Oh my God, I can’t believe I broke this. I feel—I mean—I’m so sorry. I—” She turned to look at him, lost for words on how to remedy this.
“It’s okay. Don’t … worry about it,” he said, dragging a hand down his face and squeezing his chin as he continued to stare at the mess with a pained expression. After a moment, he composed his features and offered her a sad half smile.
“I really am so sorry,” she repeated, her fingers practically itching to reach out and touch him. He was so damn pretty, her breathing hitched a bit.
“Accidents happen. Please, don’t worry about it.” He bent to scoop up the pieces, his scrub top pulled taut across his broad shoulders as he gingerly collected the fragments. Guilt drowned Harper’s stomach. Guilt and something that felt a tiny bit like lust.
“At least let me help you fix it,” she blurted out, surprised at how urgently she wanted him to say yes. He looked over his shoulder at her and lifted an eyebrow.
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to. Please. It’s the least I can do.”
“Harper’s a lab goddess. She’ll help you make a new one in no time,” Thu quipped, moving back to Harper’s side and handing over the pieces she’d collected.
He stood, and Harper was forced to take a step back and tilt her head to meet his gaze. At five foot two (and a half) she stood about eye level with his nipples. It wasn’t an awful view. His lopsided grin and dimple were back as he gave her an appraising glance.