A Brush with Love(6)

“What girl?”

“Her name is Harper. She’s a fourth-year, I think.”

Alex’s smile turned to wide-eyed shock. “Harper Horowitz?”

Dan shrugged, studying Alex’s reaction. “I didn’t get her last name. Why? Do you know her?”

“Um, yeah, I know her. She’s like some sort of genius gunner or something.”

“Gunner?”

Alex rolled his eyes. “You know—the over-the-top intense people who will do anything to get into residency. Studying all night, straight As, perfect board scores. She’s OMFS, so that’s super gunner status. She basically has her choice of specialty program.”

“OMFS?” Sometimes it felt like he and Alex spoke different languages that were vaguely similar, but the most essential points were lost in translation.

“Seriously? Are you even in dental school? Oral and maxillofacial surgery. It’s the most competitive specialty to get into. Those kids are ridiculously cutthroat—nothing but studying and practicing. I’m pretty sure Harper’s top of her class too, so I imagine she’s pretty intense.”

Dan focused on stuffing his laptop into his backpack, avoiding Alex’s questioning looks. Alex’s description didn’t match up to the endearing girl Dan had thought about all day. She’d seemed a bit on edge, sure, but far from cutthroat—and she was clearly kind, or she wouldn’t have offered to help him.

While Harper didn’t seem particularly intimidating, he couldn’t deny that she held a certain intensity about her.

She was also cute as hell.

“Dude, are you blushing?”

Dan ducked his head and zipped up his bag. “Of course not. It’s warm in here.” He tugged at his collar for effect.

“So, are you taking her out?”

“No. Not yet, at least. She broke my stone model and is helping me redo it tonight,” Dan said, standing and slinging his backpack over his shoulder.

Alex’s eyes went wide with horror as he followed Dan into the hall.

“She broke your model? From the impression I did for you? Didn’t you already have to redo it, like, four times before that? I thought you were going in early this morning to finish it.”

Dan shrugged. Yes, he’d gone through a truckload of impression powder before giving up and begging Alex to take the impression for him. And, yes, he’d begrudgingly gone in at six a.m. to finish it that morning. But all of that seemed rather insignificant now.

Alex continued to complain about his wasted time and effort as Dan’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He frowned down at the screen before hitting the Decline button.

A text pinged through a few seconds later:

Please call me, habibi. I’m having issues with the practice’s patient retention and need your help. Like I told you, this is really going to affect our finances, and I can’t do all of this on my own.



Dan deleted the message.

“What kind of asshole declines a call from his mom?” Alex asked, staring at Dan’s phone.

Guilt slammed into him, but he corralled it into a dark corner of his chest and locked the door. Since his mom had gained full control of the family practice, there was always a new emergency. A new threat to her livelihood. Another burden Dan had to carry to ensure she was okay. Dan had never thought of his mom as a helpless woman, but she seemed to be crumbling without someone to tell her exactly what to do and when to do it.

“I’m … busy,” Dan said, waving his hand down the hall.

“You’re always ‘busy’ when she calls, huh?”

Dan shot him a look as he pocketed his phone. “It’s really none of your business, is it?”

Alex held up his hands in surrender. “Whatever. I’m just saying, she’s offering you a job on a silver platter as soon as you graduate. It wouldn’t kill you to answer her calls sometimes.”

“It might,” Dan mumbled, ending the conversation. Alex didn’t know the half of it. He didn’t understand the overwhelming swell of guilt and bitterness that came as side dishes to that silver platter.

They rounded the corner to the lab, and Dan’s eyes landed on Harper.

She sat on the large wooden bench in front of the lab, her feet tucked beneath her and a hefty textbook perched in her lap. She twisted one of her soft curls around her finger while she squinted at the page in concentration as her friend from earlier chatted away next to her, oblivious to Harper’s focus.

As if feeling his gaze, Harper’s head lifted, and her eyes traveled to Dan. A slow, honeyed smile lifted the corners of her mouth, and Dan felt his own mimic the look. She clapped her textbook shut and raised her hand in a small wave. The gesture was sweet and almost vulnerable in its sincerity, and it made Dan’s heart ping-pong against his chest.

“Whoa, who’s her friend?”

Dan had forgotten Alex’s existence, and it took him a minute to follow his friend’s gaze to the girl next to Harper.

“I don’t actually know. She was there this morning.”

“You have to introduce me,” Alex said, running a hand through his hair.

“Did you just … primp?”

“No! I didn’t primp. I … had an itch,” Alex shot back.

Dan bit back a grin and nodded at his friend’s reddening face.