"What's not to like?" Peter asks, however rhetorically and dramatically. He's a gregarious, well-seasoned flirt who needs to magic to sway people in his favor. He's the imaginary friend Peter wished he'd invented to get through being so different from all of the other kids. That was before Catholic boarding school, and before Jason. Peter feels a guilty satisfaction when he thinks about how his parents shipped him off to Catholic school to find God's love and he'd found it. He's thankful his mother made peace before Peter found himself in Darrow and he wonders for the hundredth time if his father knows yet. He still doesn't care if he ever sees that man again.

Peter's pleasantly surprised by the admission, grateful for it. In fact, the friendliness of it seems to relax him at the shoulders, and he catches sight of the cider near them. He sets aside two cups and is mid-pour into the first when Alec's words stop him. "You... were thrown into a river? By who?" That's not the point of the story, Peter knows, but it does stand out. Peter's never been tossed in a river, just under a few proverbial buses -- that's a much less interesting story and, even with all things considered, even less traumatic as being tossed into a river.

"So, you thought it was a hallucination?" Peter asks. By now, he's filled one cup with the warm cider and is offering the cup to Alec.