She had spent most of the evening worrying over Donna. What she was thinking? How mad would she be when Clare got home? How catastrophically disappointed she probably was that her hopes about Simon Reamer, and advancing her career to the next step, hadn’t panned out the way she hoped tonight?

Then again, Donna was the one who stormed out of the bar early. Simon was still here, had been available for her to speak with for hours after he missed her reading. She might have still made something of the opportunity if she had kept her fucking cool and tried to salvage the situation instead of rushing back home to tantrum to Sergio and Flynn—which was undoubtedly happening right now, along with a large bottle of wine.

“So, what exactly did you want to speak to me about?”

Simon put his beer bottle down, sat back in his seat, and folded his hands on the table. “Well, like I said, I’m a huge fan of what you have here. And having seen you up onstage…and hopefully I didn’t sound too weird earlier…” He shook his head and sighed. “I’m just going to say this… I think, have this feeling really, that you’ve got some real potential, Clare. And having that feeling, about your talent, I want to be the one to sign you—bring you to market.”

Clare laughed. “Like a cow.”

Simon’s brow furrowed. “No…I mean…I didn’t—”

“I’m kidding. You were saying…”

Her comment had rattled him, thrown him off his track for a few seconds. When he started back up, he got right to the point. “I want to be your agent.”

It was Clare’s turn to sit back in her seat. “Based on one story?”

Simon bit his bottom lip for a moment. “Do you have other work? Stories? Essays? Maybe a novel? And it’s okay if you don’t,” he quickly clarified. “I can wait, but well, I guess I assumed…I mean, this is something you want, right? I find it hard to believe you simply conjured that singular story out of the gates the first time. You have written other things?”

“Yes, I have other things. Not a novel, but some stories.”

Simon’s face lit up. “Great! How many?”

“Ever?” Clare considered the four moving boxes in her closet filled with journals. “Countless? I mean”—she smiled so he wouldn’t think she was taking herself too seriously—“I’ve been writing in journals since I was twelve. I’ve filled tons of notebooks. But believe me, they’re nothing you’d be interested in.”

“So that answers my other question. You do want to be a writer.”

“What makes you—”