“Eliana Hunter. My—” Bastian hesitates for a fraction of a second, and I hold my breath. “—project manager.”
Dante’s ear-to-ear smirk suggests that he finds this title hilarious. “Is that what the kids’re calling it these days?”
“It’s whatwe’recalling it, because it’s what she is,” Bastian says firmly.
“Sure, sure.” Dante winks at me. “Welcome to the Purse, Eliana. Fair warning: This place has ruined better people than you. Once you’ve had my oysters, everything else tastes like ass. And not in the fun way, either.”
“Someone’s confident,” I remark with a laugh.
“Unfortunately for both us and his ego, he’s correct,” Bastian says. He slides onto a barstool and pats the one next to him. “Sit. Learn.”
I hike myself up onto the stool. It’s cramped in here and our knees almost touch. If I shifted just slightly to the left…
“You two have caught me in quite the whimsical mood,” Dante remarks as he pulls oysters from the ice. “Nostalgic, really.” He points a shucking knife at Bastian and grins. “I remember the first time I laid eyes on this miserable, brooding bastard. First time he came in here, he couldn’t tell a good oyster from his own ass.”
“Dante…” Bastian warns.
“No, no, she needs to hear this.” Dante’s eyes gleam with mischief. “Picture it: fifteen years ago, maybe more. Or was it…? Ah, shit, I’m getting old. Anyway, this kid—and I do meankid, couldn’t have been more than twenty, had about three hairs for a mustache—walks in at the wee hours of the morning, orders two dozen oysters, and proceeds to mutilate every single one.”
“I was experimenting,” Bastian protests as he scrubs a hand over his face.
“What you did to those poor bivalves was a tragedy.” Dante sets a plate in front of us—six perfect oysters nestled in crushed ice, each one pristine. “So I take pity on him, right? Show him how it’s done. And this stubborn S.O.B. sits right where you’re sitting now and practices until his hands are bleeding all over my damn counter.”
“You’re exaggerating,” insists Bastian.
“Like hell I am! I have photos.” Dante whips out his phone, and Bastian actually lunges for it to stop him, but Dante’s already showing me a slightly blurry picture of a much younger Bastian, hair longer and messier, intensely focused on an oyster, both his hands wrapped in what appear to be bloodstained bar towels.“Every night for a month, he’d come in after his shifts and practice. And then… Well, it’s like riding a bike, ain’t it, buddy?”
He hands Bastian a knife and an oyster. I expect Bastian to refuse, to maintain his holier-than-thou dignity, but instead he takes both items. With a slight grin, he gets to work. Finds the hinge, inserts, twists. The shell pops open, revealing perfect, glistening meat inside.
“Show-off,” I mutter, but I’m impressed and we all know it.
“Your turn,” Bastian says.
“Oh, no. Absolutely not. I’ll end up in the emergency room.”
“I’ll teach you.” He selects a smaller oyster, easier to handle. “Come here.”
He stands behind me—because it seems that this is our thing now, Bastian pressing against my back while teaching me things—and wraps his hand around mine on the knife.
“Feel for the hinge,” he murmurs, guiding my fingers along the shell’s edge. “There. Feel that little gap? That’s your entry point.”
“This feels like a metaphor for something,” I mumble, mainly to distract myself from how warm he is, how his breath tickles my ear.
“Ha! Little girl’s got her mind in the gutter,” Dante guffaws.
“Ignore him,” Bastian says. “Now, insert the knife. Steady pressure, don’t force it.”
I try to follow his instructions, but the shell resists. “It doesn’t want to open.”
“Nothing good ever does.” His hand tightens on mine, applying just a bit more pressure. “Patience. Feel for the moment when it wants to give.”
There’s a tiny pop, and suddenly, the shell splits open. Inside, the oyster gleams.
“I did it!” I’m absurdly proud of this tiny, meaningless accomplishment.
“You did.” Bastian releases my hand but doesn’t immediately step away. “Now, taste it.”
“Raw? Just… raw?”
