“I laughed, loud enough that Delia looked up at me. She made motions for me to come over, but I pretended to be looking past her into the food tent. "Hurry. Pretend you're pointing something out so I can pretend not to see her." Luke put a hand on my shoulder and pointed with the other towards the sky. "Look, the moon." "That was the best you could come up with?" I demanded.”

“We'll need to clarify for the record, that I'm a pretend girlfriend. Pretend,” she demands. “Got it? If you're giving me that goofy look because you think there are going to be benefits as part of this deal, you can just hold it right there! Pretend girlfriend. Say it with me.” I shake my head at her outrageous comments. “Please. I've got that understood.” “Good.”

“I buried my head under the darkness of the pillow and pretended it was night. I couldn't see the point of getting up. I had nothing to look forward to.”

“Alan Blunt got in touch with me and asked me to put you up here for the rest of the week, to pretend that you're my son. I have to say, you don't look anything like me.""I don't look anything like myself either," Alex said.”

“She laughs and looks out the window and I think for a minute that she's going to start to cry. I'm standing by the door and I look over at the Elvis Costello poster, at his eyes, watching her, watching us, and I try to get her away from it, so I tell her to come over here, sit down, and she thinks I want to hug her or something and she comes over to me and puts her arms around my back and says something like 'I think we've all lost some sort of feeling.”

“This was why I loved my Grana. Being with her always made me laugh. She accepted life forwhat it was. She didn’t pretend or put on airs. She was just Grana.”