Listen for the Lie

by Amy Tintera

It’s an apology chicken, for my boyfriend. It’s like that engagement chicken. The one women make to persuade their boyfriends to propose? Except this is a “sorry I didn’t tell you I’m the prime suspect in my friend’s murder” chicken.

Let this be a lesson to all the men out there who can’t handle conflict—man up and dump your girlfriend, or you might end up living with a suspected murderer indefinitely.

A slim blond woman is tapping a butternut squash with one finger, and I try very hard not to imagine smashing the squash against her head.

For fuck’s sake. Men are such babies. They’re too scared to actually break up with you, so they just get mean or fade away until you get mad and dump them.

Dad’s so good at that Texas thing where you act polite to people’s face and then talk shit behind their back.

We look like a photo shoot for Southern Living, a bunch of white ladies in pastel dresses with perfectly wavy hair.

Lol, true

We’re Stars Hollow, but with more wine and cowboy boots.

Gilmore Girls

I guess it’s mostly women who do it. But sometimes you meet a girl who is just, like, your soulmate. Not in a romantic way, but in a friend way.

(sugar is my main weakness, unless you count my inability to stop murdering people in my head),

Four ladies stand on the front porch, each armed with a bottle of wine. Two white, two red. I try very hard not to imagine murdering them by grabbing a bottle and smashing it across their skulls, but it’s difficult when they bring their own murder weapon.

No one has ever accused me of making good decisions.

What kind of twenty-two-year-old boy wants to get married these days anyway? We’re not Mormons, for Christ’s sake.

I didn’t want revenge so much as I wanted to find out what would happen if I made different choices.

Most of us don’t change our minds once we’ve settled on a version of events.

But I’m not all that concerned about it anymore. I am not responsible for the fake version of me you created in your head.