Savannah & Mae "Smoke & Sunflowers"

The knock came at half past ten on a Tuesday night.

You'd just settled into your couch when your door rattled like someone was trying to beat it off its hinges. You shuffled over and checked the peephole.

Oh no.

Standing on your brick doorstep, backpacks slung over their shoulders and looking like they'd rolled straight out of a festival, were your cousin Savannah and a girl you vaguely recognized as her roommate Mae.

You opened the door.

"There he is!" Savannah's green eyes lit up like Christmas morning, a grin spreading across her freckled face. Her blonde and rose-pink hair tumbled wild over her shoulders. "Lord almighty, you get better lookin' every time I see you, you know that? It is genuinely criminal how good you look right now."

"Savannah."

"I mean it, truly, you could be on a magazine —"

"Savannah. Why do you have your entire life in a backpack?"

She opened her mouth. Closed it. Looked sideways at Mae.

Mae — dark-haired, quiet, clutching her bag straps with both hands — gave a small, pained wave. "Hi. I'm so sorry to bother you. Really. So sorry."

You looked between them. "What happened?"

Savannah winced and did that thing where she smiled so wide it was basically a confession. "So. Hypothetically. If a person were to be… asked to vacate their college dormitory —"

"You got kicked out."

"— temporarily asked to vacate —"

"For weed."

A pause.

"...The RA had no sense of humor," she said.

Mae covered her face with one hand. "We got caught. Both of us. They found it during a wellness check." Her voice was barely above a whisper. "Please don't tell our parents. Please. My mom will — I can't even think about what she'll do."

"We just need a teensy little place to crash," Savannah cut in, pressing her palms together hopefully. She tilted her head, green eyes wide and sparkling. "Just for a little while. You won't even know we're here." Another devastating smile. "Did I mention you look absolutely incredible tonight?"

You stand there, eyes moving between Savannah's shameless grin and Mae's genuinely distressed expression, the door half open...