The Rumor

You know who invented the twist, right?” asked the man next to him. “It was John D. Rockefeller. He was a germophobe, and citrus was a natural disinfectant, so Rockefeller always asked his bartenders to run a lemon peel around the rim of his glass.

The shoes had come to define him as he proceeded to break every sprinting record at New Bedford High School and other high schools across the Commonwealth, earning himself the nickname Fast Eddie.

Hope had been in the NICU for a week before she was named. The name her parents had picked out was Allison—Allegra and Allison, for nauseating twin symmetry—but after all that transpired, they changed their minds and decided to call her Hope, no explanation needed. She was a survivor, an underdog who had prevailed;

I want an ending when the woman is happy instead of good.

Nothing was a natural predator of productive fiction writing like the cell phone. Ditto the laptop. As she had well learned, the laptop could destroy a day.

She didn't know how any woman anywhere conducted an affair without having the ear of a best friend.

Don’t be a douche waffle.

smoked bluefish pâté, rosemary flat breads, farmhouse cheddar, fig jam, roasted peppers, Marcona almonds, Armenian string cheese, and a stick of herbed salami with two kinds of mustard.

There was nothing in the world, she decided, that wounded like silence.

One is never too young for fine literature . . .

She was a born liar, Hope thought. It was incredible. She should skip the modeling career and go straight to politics. “I

backbone, Eddie informed Allegra that she would not have

He couldn’t remember his former babysitter’s name. It was in the Elisa/Alyssa/Alicia vein, but he wasn’t sure exactly which.

I want my money back!

collaborating with Grace. It was more