Liz looked up at her, her dark-lined, bloodshot eyes already not interested in whatever Clare had to say.

“Can you announce the next few reads? I need to talk with someone.”

“Sorry, I’m running the mic.”

Clare’s shoulders sagged, and she gave Liz her best are you kidding me glare.

“Fine,” Liz said, sighing. “But you owe me a beer during intermission.”

“Whatever. Thanks a lot,” Clare snapped and headed down the stairs toward Donna.

“What are friends for?” Liz said, her voice dripping in sarcasm.

“Such a bitch,” Clare whispered, careful to keep her voice too low for Liz to actually hear her. She suspected that Liz was all tough show, but she didn’t want to take the chance of actually pissing her off and getting her ass kicked.

By the time she made it to Donna’s table, the last of her friends were disappearing through the door. Clare pulled out the chair across from Donna and took a seat.

“I’ve been thinking,” Donna started in right away. “I’m going to quit.”

“Quit what?”

“Writing,” she clarified. “This is such a waste of time. I mean, what am I even doing? Why? Why do I do it?”

“Because you’re good at it,” Clare said.

“I’m not good.”

“Can we not start that again?”

“It’s true, Clare. I’m not just saying it or blowing smoke or hoping you’ll prop me up. If I were good, really good, something would have happened by now. I keep sending pieces out, and nothing comes back but rejection after rejection after rejection. I can’t take it anymore. It hurts, physically hurts. Right here.” She pointed to the space above her stomach and below her breastbone. “What even is this?” She pressed her finger into the spot on her torso. “Where is your spleen? It seems like this feeling, this sickening sense of failure, should be leaking from my spleen.”

“Stop it,” Clare told her and reached for Donna’s still-full beer. Taking a sip, she pushed the bottle back across the table to her friend.

“That’s exactly what I want to do—stop all of this.”

“But you don’t, not really. You love writing.”

“I hate writing.”

“No, you hate rejection.”

Donna sighed, took a sip from her beer, then raised her eyes to Clare. “Anyway, what about you?”

Clare sat back in her chair. Her gaze wandered to the street scene just over Donna’s shoulder through the tinted plate-glass window. People, one after another, rushed by. “What about me?”

“You lecture me about not giving up, but you write too. And you never send anything out.”

“I’m not a writer,” Clare said flatly.

“What the hell are you talking about? You write every day. You have hundreds of journals stacked up in boxes at the back of your closet.”