As the two of us leave his bedroom after getting my things unpacked, he leads me into the office across the hall. Entering the room my jaw immediately dropped at how nice the setup was. Despite being aware that he worked from home, I hadn’t expected his office to be this nice. The desk was set off to one side, strategically placed away from any windows that may cause glare or awkward lighting during meetings. The wall behind the desk had a bookshelf that was decorated with various books and plants. However, the rest of the room in front of the desk contained a couch, small refrigerator and I could see a few gaming consoles under the TV. Despite most of the walls being a dark gray, the plants and furniture as well as the various artwork displayed on the walls helped to brighten up the space immensely. 

As I finish taking everything in, I look over at him to find him already looking over at me. “I take it that you like it in here.” He says as the corner of his mouth turns upward into a smirk. “I noticed you looking over at the games. I have quite a few if you’d like to play some after lunch.”

Smiling in response, I say, “I’d love to, but you’d better be prepared to lose.” Since I was a girl, I was often underestimated in games, but I would say that I was pretty confident in my skills overall. 

Smiling he says, “Alright, you should know, there are several games over there that I have no idea how to play so that is actually even more likely than you think.” Laughing, he continues, “Come on, let’s tour the main level of the house.” 

As the two of us leave the gaming room and head back downstairs he walks me through all of the rooms on the main floor. Although they were all nice, the rooms didn’t seem as personal to him as the ones on the top level. As we walk back down into the living room, I look around at the solid white walls. There were no natural wood tones in here and the start contrast of the warmth upstairs versus the colder colors down here was apparent. The couch was light gray and the coffee tables and nightstands were both a gray wood tone. There were blue accents throughout the room and the Christmas tree in the corner was decorated in white, silver, and blue. Although beautiful, I knew that these decorations were not in Cade's style. 

“So what do you think?” he asked, looking directly at me. Seeing the questioning look in my eye, he continues, “What is it?”

I responded, taking a second to think about my words carefully, especially as I could hear his friends in an adjacent room, “It is really nice in here, but it doesn’t match the style of your rooms at all. Did someone else pick out the furniture for the living room?”

Laughing he responded, “Yes, Ella did a lot of the decorating down here as her and Milo use this space the most, I decided to give her creative liberty to decorate however she liked. It isn’t my style, for sure, but I do think it looks nice here.”

As we make our way through the rest of the main level of the house, we see a more relaxed den/hangout spot where everyone is currently sitting on sofas and beanbags and chatting. Stopping by for a second, we continue our tour and pass a bathroom, then we enter the dining room and kitchen. All of the rooms downstairs have similar color schemes to that of the living room until we enter the kitchen. It still had the white walls, however instead of blue being that accent color, I noticed hints of green in various artworks as well as several plants living on various shelves throughout the room, stepping closer to them I looked at a few of them before turning to ask, “Are these all edible plants? I can recognize several herbs here.”

“Yes, all of the plants in the kitchen are edible. I like to use them when cooking or even just as a fresh garnish.”

“That’s really cool.” I say as I continue to look at the kitchen. I noticed that even though the cabinets were a similar gray tone as the coffee table and nightstand in the living room, the tan countertop helped to bring some earthy tones back into the room. There was an island in the center that matched the countertops and had one of the nicest sinks I had seen. There was also a small table off to the side that had some fun green chairs that played into the warm colors found in the artwork. The entire room was pulled together by a rug that was located in front of the island that melded the gray, tan and green colors beautifully to make everything in the space look cohesive. As I finish taking everything in, I murmur, “This is literally a dream kitchen.”

“Well, I’m glad you like it,” he says as he rolls up his sleeves. “Now it is time to get started on something for lunch, do you want to help me or would you rather just watch?”

Following his lead, I roll my sleeves up as well as respond, “I’ll help, what can I do.”

“Depends on what you’d like for lunch today. We’ve got a ton of options.” he says as he opens the refrigerator door. “Lets see,” he pauses as he moves something around in the refrigerator, “What do you think about making spaghetti and meatballs? We even have stuff for garlic bread to go along with it.”

“That sounds really good,” I answered. 

As he pulls things out of the refrigerator, he sits them down on the counter. He then goes over to the cabinets and pulls out a mixing bowl and several seasonings before turning back to me. “I think that I’ve pulled out everything that we need. We’re going to use my recipe for this, so hopefully you’ll like it better than my brother’s food.”

As the two of us start laughing, he begins to give me instructions as the two of us work together to make lunch for all of us. Just as we finish the garlic bread and get it into the oven, Ella, Milo and Oli enter the kitchen. 

“How long until lunch is ready,” Oli says, rubbing his stomach. 

“Not long, we just put the garlic bread into the oven. The noodles, sauce and meatballs are already done.” Cade replies. 

“No salad?” Milo asks.

“We didn’t make one, we have time if you guys would like to have salad too?” Cade replies looking over at me.

“I wouldn’t mind a salad too,” I responded. 

Immediately Cade jumps into action, grabbing things out of the refrigerator. “Okay, what would you like in your salad? We have lettuce obviously. Let’s see, we also have cucumbers, carrots, tomatoes, onions and bell peppers.”

“That all sounds good to me, I like most vegetables.” I respond as I go to the sink to wash my hands. Walking over to him, I grab a few of the vegetables that he pulled out and take them to the sink to get them washed. 

After pulling all of the vegetables out of the fridge, he grabs a cutting board, a knife and a large bowl to put the salad in. “Okay, you wash them, I’ll chop them.”

“Okay.” I respond as I take a look around the room. Although it seems as though Cade hadn’t noticed, everyone immediately got quiet and I could tell that they were all looking at him. I couldn’t help but surmise that this behavior was out of character for him. Looking up at them, I ask, “Is everything okay guys? You all got quiet all of a sudden.”

“Nope, we're just fine.” Ella replied. “You guys seem to have things under control here, so we’ll just be in the dining room until everything is done.”

As the three of them retreated, I could hear their voices as they began talking about how different he was acting. Looking over at him, he seemed to be focused completely on finishing the salad. “Are you okay? They seem to think that you’re acting weird.”

“I’m okay. They are just not used to me being interested in anyone and I’ve never dated, so me being with you is something different to them.” He says as he looks over at me with a smile on his face. 

Feeling relieved that he is not bothered by how they are all treating him, I began to mix the salad as he pulled out the garlic bread. He then goes over to the fridge to pull out various salad dressings and lay them out on the countertop as well as shredded cheese, croutons and bacon bits. “Wow, do you guys cook like this often?” I ask as I look at all of the food we made. 

“A few times a week,” he responds before yelling towards the dining room, “Guys, the food is done!.”

Within seconds we could hear their chairs scraping as they all entered the kitchen. Oli was the first in line, rushing to the sink to wash his hands before grabbing a plate. The other two follow at a more normal pace. After we all filled our plates we made our way into the dining room to eat.