We introduce a short-range repulsive force model to tackle near-contact interactions when the collision occurs between bubbles. In contrast to the previous numerical method adopting the adaptive mesh refinement technique, such a mesoscale model can be applied to a relatively coarse mesh, which can prevent the nonphysical coalescence between bubbles without excessive mesh refinement. We assume that the repulsive force is inversely proportional to the third power of distance, as a reasonable approximation to the short-range phase interactions. The model is validated against two different experiments. In both experiments, two identical bubbles rising side by side were considered. First, the experiment performed in a water-glycerol mixture helps determine the model parameter K. Second, three typical combinations of bubble size and initial separation distance are simulated, presenting different types of interactions, i.e., coalescence, bouncing coalescence, and bouncing separation, agreeing well with the second experiment, which was performed in pure water. Owing to its simplicity, this model can be easily implemented into existing codes, and it can be extended to the case with multiple bubbles or droplets.