In the dining room, four-year-old Nick is busy with his after-school snack: apple slices smothered in peanut butter, animal crackers with cheddar cheese, and a glass of full cream milk. He hums and sways his head from side to side while he eats, seeming thoroughly entertained with himself. Ellie hands Summer a bowl of chicken noodle soup (“From a can,” she says apologetically) and a mug of warm calamansi juice, as if her sister’s broken heart were a common cold. She doesn’t say, I told you so, doesn’t hurl Summer’s hurt back at her, but she shrugs and raises her eyebrows as if to say, Well, what did you expect? What Summer expected was this: that Scott would come to his senses and—fueled by the fondness absence brings—fall madly in love with her once and for all. Every day after graduation, she would wake up and imagine Scott knocking on the door of the small studio apartment she was renting with more than half of her call-center-trainer salary. She would imagine the lost, lonely look on his face that she wouldn’t be able to resist, imagine throwing her arms around him as he begged for forgiveness.
