Page 6 of A Brush with Love
CHAPTER 3
DAN
Dan couldn’t suppress his grin when class let out. He’d spent most of the day zoning out of lectures, Harper’s warm brown eyes and nervous smile popping into his mind and sending a jolt of excitement to his fingers.
“Dude, you okay?”
Dan snapped back to reality to find his friend Alex eyeing him.
“Yeah, why?”
“I’ve never seen you smile at school before.”
Dan opened his mouth to argue, but realized Alex had a point. Dental school had been a choice not entirely Dan’s own, and as his first year clipped along at a brutal pace, the stress of the program and competitive attitude of his classmates did little to assure him he’d chosen wisely.
“I think I met a girl,” he muttered. He didn’t really want to talk to Alex about it, but couldn’t resist the urge to bring up Harper. Alex’s eyebrows disappeared behind his floppy black hair as he fixed Dan with a sly smile.
“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 impressionIdid 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:
