“Be nice to his family. Pretend not to notice the way their house smells. Pretend to like their food. Mimic their barbaric customs at the dinner table.”
“You're like this leopard who's pretending to be a house cat.”
“Although, pretending not to notice is almost worse than noticing.”
“I used to pretend that I was just passing through this family on my way to my real one.”
“I like to be able to open a can of stock and I like to talk about politics, or the movies, at the dinner table sometimes instead of food.”
“He was serious. He didn’t want her to hold him close. He didn’t want to pretend she was his mother. He didn’t want to imagine going home in her car to pet her black labs. He didn’t want to dream about sitting down to a home-cooked spaghetti dinner at her kitchen table with her family. Those things would never be his. He watched her eyes switch from hazel to green.”