You Feel Like Home [h.s.]

The Curious Case of the Mixed Parcel

Ryan's gotten quite accustomed to the state of her new flat in the past nine days. After her embarrassing afternoon with Harry and Jackson, she made sure to haul all of the boxes out of the moving van while they were at the park, before leaving the keys with the doorman to be retrieved from the moving company. She couldn't bear to have another interaction with her new neighbors, especially with the heat of her flushed cheeks still permeating through her skin.

The first few days were filled with hiding inside the confines of her new living space, making sure to set up her eclectic furniture the way she wanted. The new space was much larger than her last flat with Fiona, and while she'll miss the way her friend used to barge into her room unannounced, lying on her duvet while talking Ryan's ear off about anything and everything, she's grown quite fond of the silence.

Her taste never really matched Fiona's, in the sense that Ryan had a strong affinity towards vintage items and Fiona was into the Next Best Thing. Fiona enjoyed bright colored furniture, abstract paintings hung haphazardly on walls, loud ornate rugs that never matched the throw pillows that Ryan would source from second-hand stores—Fiona's style was multifaceted and unlike anything Ryan had ever seen before.

So now that she had an entire flat to herself, she spent the first three days decorating and reorganizing, and doing everything in her power to avoid that dreaded hallway.

The entryway of her flat was a long narrow hallway, with an archway at the end to flow into the large living room and shared kitchen space. She made sure to decorate the hallway with a skinny simple rug she salvaged at a consignment shop back home in Devon, with a hall table filled with pictures of her family and a glass bowl to hold her keys.

With the opening of the living room came along bright sunlight that shone through the wall of windows that really made everything feel much larger than it actually was. Ryan was lucky enough to score a unit with a built-in fireplace that she decided to paint a deep navy blue, offsetting the light pewter walls that encapsulated the entire room. Her favorite armchairs she nicked from her Gran's house and reupholstered surrounded the fireplace, both a pastel shade of sage green and maroon. The deep juniper velvet couch sat across from the chairs, with rustic clay and amber throw pillows nestled into the corners. Her favorite quilt that Fiona attempted to weave lay across the back of the couch, and it made her miss her friend a little less than she normally would.

Luna had her own space in the corner of the living room, with her day bed and cat tree snugged up against the wall. Her toys lay in baskets underneath the television set, and Ryan made sure that her kitten had everything she needed to get accustomed to their new shared space.

Where Harry had an impressive collection of records, Ryan had her own massive conglomeration of books that she organized respectively in their own shelves by genre—large units that lined the far wall that lead into the kitchen space. She made sure the plants and crystals her mother gifted her with were situated on their own pieces of furniture, to appease her whenever she decided to randomly Facetime Ryan in the week and a half of her living on her own for the first time in twenty-seven years.

The master bedroom was simple—a queen-sized bed nestled against the farthest wall, surrounded by two matching nightstands on either side. The walls were a simple white color, to which Ryan added a terra cotta duvet cover with matching pillowcases, a vintage circular mirror she found at an estate sale in Hackney, and a smaller bookshelf kitty-cornered to house her favorite collection of novels in.

The smaller guest bedroom on the other end of the hall was transformed into Ryan's new work-from-home station. She had gotten a call a week after moving in from her supervisor, informing her that the office will begin sending products to her new address for her to test out, coming up with her own opinions and additions to send back to the manufacturing site.