CN Memoir.

Imagine a room dripping entirely in monochromatic colors. Housing gray floors, black furniture, white accents, and a mixture of sister-colors, this limited color palette drowns the small box. Imagine sliding the white trimmed glass door to your right, immediately after fumbling with the lock intended to keep the wooden gate closed.
I push the familiar dark-washed curtains out of my path, and awkwardly trip into my second home. This isn’t my second home now, nor was it a year ago, or ten years ago, but it was for the time being, and I know I will always allow it to be .
Without hesitation, I would drop what was occupying my arms, instantly making the small room untidy, splotched with brightly colored bags. Only after fully completing this routine would I actually look up at the face I always looked forward to seeing.
As if I were at my own home, I would barely breathe before I ducked under the covers of my second bed, submerging myself under the grayscale room. He always questioned but accepted my weird attachment to blankets, and how I’ve never entered my second home without planting my body into those sheets.
There was always something dancing upon the obnoxiously large flat screen television, perched above a black cabinet featuring two translucent misted-gray doors. It varied between two options, however, a violent video game that I was eager to play, or a movie I most likely had never heard of.
For countless hours, we would remain half slouched in potentially spine-damaging positions, as we shifted through the two previously mentioned television options. My mother interrogated me every night. “What did you do all day? Really? Why? Aren’t you bored? Why don’t you go do something instead of spending so much time there?” she would inquire in an overly-annoying way.
The truth was, contrary to everyone’s beliefs, I was never remotely bored during my days at my second home. Nor could I ever grow tired of someone who I was irrevocably connected with, the first person to remain at my level for more than an hour. The first person who was considerate enough to return all of the things I was used to giving away.
The majority of autumn and early winter was spent here, in silence, in slurs of video-game curse words and slanders, and in storms of new and old music.
He often made his signature dinner dish, as it was truly the only thing he was capable of making. We became five-minute chefs as we boiled penne pasta noodles and coated them in a blanket of pre-made tomato sauce. On one rare occasion, we attempted to incorporate chicken into the recipe, which turned out unfortunately, forcing us to both pretend to enjoy the delicacy that was mysteriously unpleasant. Our food adventures did not stop there, as a favorite memory of mine took place in that similarly color-coated kitchen. One afternoon, my famished stomach led me to the fridge where I attempted to remove a pizza box similarly placed like a “Janga” tower. Unfortunately for me, an entire carton of blueberries lurked underneath the box. After the violet filled plastic felt the desire to catapult itself off the shelf, what seemed like millions of blue marbles scattered all over the floor. Through volcanic laughter, the occupant of my second home refused to help me clean up the mess, leaving me to spend nearly thirty minutes picking up each sphere one by one.
It wasn’t the food scandals, or the selection of entertainment, or the comfortable form-fitting bed that kept me returning to my second home. I wasn’t drawn to the salt and pepper static that draped over the room, or the only cat that was ever remotely nice to me. It was the face I remember, the spastic laughter constantly rupturing the silence, the first person who I synthesized with flawlessly. My second home is the house of my best friend.