The summer before senior year arrived with the kind of warmth that clung to the skin and made the air taste like ripe mangoes and sunscreen. For Daisy, it felt like time had slowed just enough to let her savor each day with Jordan. They seemed to move through the season in their own quiet rhythm, picnics under oak trees, bike rides down winding neighborhood streets, and late-night phone calls that stretched past midnight until one of them fell asleep mid-sentence.

On one Saturday afternoon, they spread out a checkered blanket in the park, the sun casting dappled patterns through the branches overhead. Jordan unpacked the sandwiches he’d made, neatly...