Page 29 of A Lab Rat's Guide to Fated Love
But as their eyes locked, a millisecond before she could avert her gaze, a spark of emotion zapped out of her. Sharp. Unmistakably clear.
Pasta… Cats.
And it was gone as quickly as it had appeared.
That can’t be right.
Had he imagined it? He’d definitely imagined it.
That can’t be right.
Nori
Pain in the ass.
Why did Vir have to materialize out of nowhere with his stupid hair dripping water everywhere? Would it kill him to use the hair dryer for once? It was right there beside the bathroom mirror.
Nori had been excelling at avoiding him all week. And she’d been so stealthily smooth with her exits that Vir still had no idea. She’d even come up with anear-genius plan to distract herself from thinking or feeling things that she shouldn’t be thinking or feeling.
“I was asking—” Vir’s muffled words came from somewhere closer than her brain was spatially aware of him being. “—if you’d like some pasta for lunch?”
Her head snapped in the direction of his voice, and she came face to face with his dumb mascara-commercial eyes, his face a mere foot away from hers. She jumped to her feet, startled by the proximity, and lost her balance.
While Vir’s arm flung out to catch her by the waist, her own hands reflexively threw themselves on the table in an attempt to steady herself. The impact, combined with the cord of her headphones being wrapped around her thumb, tore the jack out of its port. And a loud chorus ofBaby Sharkstarted blaring from the speakers.
A solid heartbeat later, her horrified eyes met his amused ones, and her face flamed with raw mortification.
Vir’s mouth twitched right before he squeezed his eyes shut, clearly trying not to laugh. And failing miserably at it. She couldn’t blame him. She wouldn’t have lasted with a straight face if she were in his place, either. A full-grown adult, nano-biotechnology scientist, Dr. Nori Arya, listening toBaby Sharkas her work playlist. On loop. OnlyBaby Shark.
Ha, fucking ha.
She’d initially played the children’s rhyme because she’d been missing Goober, and it was, for some unfathomable reason, his favorite piece of music in the entire world. But she’d quickly discovered how good it was at distracting her brain from things she didn’t want to think about. The repetitive loop put her thoughts on mute, leaving just enough processing space to focus on a single task. And she’d made her algorithm the single task, while avoiding Vir at all costs.
In her defense, it’d been working perfectly fine till he had to appear so abruptly next to her and ruin it all.
Now his face hovered inches from hers while his hand pressed against her back, supporting her weight.Baby Sharkplaying in the background had lost its magnificent powers of distraction. It was Vir who distracted her now, with his dumb lopsided grin and his dumb eyes, and his dumb lips that parted ever so slightly just as her eyeslowered to them and stayed there.
A millisecond later, they darted back up just in time to catch Vir’s gaze moving up from her mouth, too. She hadn’t thought it possible, but she swore his eyes grew a shade darker as they bore into hers.
“Uh… is that my shampoo?” she blurted out the first remotely sane words that came to mind. But before she could think her next action through, she’d already leaned in with her nose in Vir’s hair, and was sniffing the damp strands like a cat sampling the aroma of a freshly opened box of crispy, human-grade chicken treats.
They were the same soothing notes she remembered from his jacket earlier. Only diluted by an annoying leafy scent—the scent of her shampoo. But the rest…
Didhesmell that good?
“Yeah… I don’t have mine here,” Vir replied, grinning sheepishly as she backed away from him.
Of course, he didn’t. She had to ask as if she didn’t already know.
The song ended before looping right back, and as if on cue, Nori slammed her laptop shut, cutting the music off. She sneaked a tentative glance at Vir and found him glaring down at his feet, with the tips of his ears resembling sliced beets.
She would’ve laughed, but judging from how warm her cheeks were, she knew her own face probably looked worse. “Pasta would be great, thank you.”
“Pasta?” Vir cleared his throat. “Uh, yes. Okay then.”
Nori mumbled an excuse before retreating to the bathroom. Sliding the door shut behind her, she stared at the crazy woman in the mirror, while the last few moments replayed in her head. She whispered every expletive she knew under her breath as she splashed handfuls of icy water onto her face, imagining it turning into steam right away. What waswrongwith her?
And what was wrong withVir?
