Hating the Cinnamon Roll CEO (Cinnamon Rolls and Pumpkin Spice #1)

Prologue

Avoid mixing alcohol with the internet.

– Marcella

Question 1: Full Legal Name

Taking another sip from my bottle of wine, I squint drearily at my laptop screen. My cursor blinks in the text box below question numero uno. Full…legal…name…

I swear into the glass when the answer hits me. “I totally know that one.”

After misspelling my name twice, I manage to input Marcella Reina Keyes .

It takes me another full minute to recall my birthday, but only because I’m a little too inebriated to remember it’s today .

August 8 th .

Prime smack in the armpit of Georgia summer.

Behind me in the cramped living room of my overpriced garbage apartment, my feeble window AC unit coughs and chokes, none the wiser that my will to live rests solely upon its frail mechanical shoulders. There’s a fight taking place somewhere downstairs. Upstairs, my neighbor’s three children protest their bedtime. Loudly. With significant jumping.

If I weren’t so focused on filling out this form, I’d send a drunk text to my mother, apologizing for my existence. Bless that woman if I ever had the lung capacity to reach the octaves my neighbor’s kids are managing.

The cacophony reaches right through my noise-canceling headphones, which are blaring music directly into my ear cavities.

Maintaining such piercing sounds is an achievement, truly.

Question 6: Describe your perfect date.

The urge to put April 25 in reference to Miss Congeniality comes nearly as violently as the urge to put not August 8 .

Thankfully, I come to my senses and recall that this question isn’t referring to a calendar date. It’s referring to a date date . Like, going to the movies. Or long walks on the beach.

Which.

For the record.

Took me twenty-six years to realize meant getting to know a person one-on-one . Not just having the inexplicable urge to get sand in your shoes and salt in your hair for a prolonged length of time. Apparently.

In case anyone’s wondering, I’ve had this knowledge for a marvelous four minutes.

Because, yes, I’m googling date ideas and wishing I could blame the absence of a clue on my half-full bottle of wine. In all reality, I don’t do much. I have never done much . I go to work. I come home. I play Stardew Valley with my best friends.

That’s it.

I’m not even out doing anything today because my goal in life is blissful anonymity, and birthdays are an antagonist of that noble effort. Being the center of attention just because I was born once upon a time is ridiculous. Even my darling friends know better than to so much as text me today.

Dates… Dates… Dates…

The few dates I’ve been on were wholly uneventful. Classic. Boring. Predictable.

Movies and coffee shops and just hanging out , with Netflix on.

Which is another thing that took me an embarrassing amount of time to understand.

Thankfully, the definition hit me like a bullet train when that guy from my high school’s hand found my waist. I got out of that scummy boy’s parent-free environment before his disgusting mouth reached mine. If I’m not mistaken, I threw the remote at him, too. He seriously didn’t even let me finish picking a movie.

What a louse.

Sighing, I remember I bought myself a cake at Publix—along with this bottle of wine. Even though I don’t formally celebrate my birthday, the single constant is that I use the excuse to get myself a little guilt-free treat. This year, my guilt-free treat is an entire lemon curd and vanilla cake with buttercream frosting.

The beautiful little personal cake peers at me from the kitchenette counter beyond the armrest of my couch, where my feet are propped so my newly-painted toenails can finish drying. They are alternating red and black, ending on ladybug big toes. I wiggle them, sigh, and figure I should finish this form question before I reward myself with the cake.

Perfect date.

Perfection is an unattainable standard, given that human imperfection causes the definition to perpetually shift from one moment to the next. There are several specific things I enjoy doing, but there are many people I would not enjoy doing them with. I suppose the same can be said in the opposite direction. A perfect date is the person, not the activity. If the activity must determine whether or not I enjoy myself, I’m probably with the wrong person, but if the activity would make me want to scream without the support of my company, they might just be perfect.

I double-check with good ol’ Google to make sure this question does indeed refer to the activity, not the description of the person with whom dates are partook, then I move on.

Somewhere after question twenty, I run out of wine and remember my cake, so I drag myself off the couch and snatch it. Fork primed with an entire buttercream frosting rose, I march on.

Question 34: How do you handle disagreements?

Full sugary goodness fills my mouth while I do a spot of soul searching.

When was the last time I found myself plagued by a disagreement I had to handle ?

I have two friends.

Two.

And I’ve kept them around all these years because they don’t prompt unnecessary things like disagreements . There’s a right way and a wrong way to everything. Whenever we hit something that looks suspiciously like the start of a disagreement, we talk like adults until we learn what’s correct.

At…work…this method of communication is not accessible.

Because work is full of pretentious idiots.

But that’s another thing entirely.

I relay my preference for talking things out when possible, and my tendency to bottle up my frustrations when otherwise. Specifically at work. Due to all the idiots.

Disagreements , I conclude in the form, can only be resolved when all active parties are made of flesh and bone—not brick and plaster.

“This is a dang good cake,” I mumble.

Half of it has mysteriously disappeared.

So weird.

Almost as weird as these never-ending questions. Mercy.

Question 56: How much alone time do you need?

All of it. Every last drop. I juice that sucker like it’s liquid gold. Since my job is frequently unpredictable and full of surprise travel, on the blessed days when I’m in the office during the usual nine-to-five, I require the remaining eight waking hours to myself. The harrowing reality that another day comes every morning makes my recharge time painfully important. Dare I say, necessary. For survival.

I enjoy a modest singular outing with my friends every two weeks to a month. And quite often, I neglect the group chat organizing such an outing until an embarrassing amount of time has passed. The thing is, I do enjoy going out with my friends. But I never go anywhere by choice on the days that I work. And I do tend to begin dissociating at around the eight hours of socialization mark.

Huh.

I guess that means, regardless of surrounding activities, I need a perfectly reasonable eight hours a day of alone time, not counting sleep.

Smirking, I type in my answer.

To think Mom and Dad called me antisocial throughout my childhood as though being antisocial isn’t a full-time job.

Question 79: Where do you want to live?

Not here.

Somewhere with an excellent cooling and heating system. I’m talking somewhere I can afford sixty-nine degree temps indoors in the summer. Somewhere quiet. Somewhere with less light pollution than the dead center of Atlanta, which isn’t a high bar given your social status, I know, but still. I think I’d like to see the stars every once in a while.

Question 93: Do you consider yourself to be high maintenance?

Absolutely not. Lock me in a room with snacks and the internet for a month. I will thrive.

Question 102: List all five love languages in order of which you find to be most to least important. You may explain if you so desire.

Love speaks more than five languages. It sees. It listens. It adapts. Sometimes, people need kind words. Sometimes, they need a coffee. Sometimes, they need to be held. I can’t rate the importance of how love is expressed any more than I can rate water, food, and air. It’s all important, in different quantities at different frequencies. It just depends on what you need in a given moment and, perhaps, how long it takes between getting what you need before you start to die.

Question 125: How do you deal with change or the unexpected?

Gracious. How many questions are there…?

I could scroll ahead.

But that would give me something to look forward to.

And we won’t be having that.

I deal poorly with the unexpected. My response tends to include internal screaming, and I have been known to throw up. Just not recently.

Question 143: What constitutes cheating?

Acting dishonestly, unfairly, or unfaithfully.

It’s the Google definition. Because I’ve never thought about defining cheating before. I don’t understand why people cheat on the people they claim to love the most. I’d hate myself forever for betraying someone I care about or who cares about me.

Being cared about is a gift.

I’m not one to scorn a gift.

Question 199: Is there anything you’d like to add, say, or share before proceeding to the final question then consenting to submit these answers for the purposes defined previously? My assistant will be in touch with any answers to relevant queries should you be shortlisted.

That poor assistant. Having to deal with all the nonsense of this form, and now my own personal brand of nonsense. They deserve a raise.

I appreciate the thoroughness of this interrogation and the obvious desire to end on a solid 200. Out of curiosity, which questions were stuffed in just to meet that quota? Also, if shortlisted, do I receive a copy of your answers to all these questions? It only seems fair. If you couldn’t tell, I’m not the biggest fan of power imbalances, and the scale already tips oh so heavily in your favor.

Question 200: Why do you want to marry me?

Finally. It’s over. The sense of dull pride rising in my chest is wholly uncalled for, but here it is, bubbling up like fulfillment… Or, actually, that might be the entire cake I just ate. Who can say for sure?

Back to this delightful little question…

Why do I, a perfectly normal young adult, want to become the housewife of a random billionaire whose name I don’t even know because I didn’t bother checking anything before clicking your ad?

Simple.

Easy.

Painless, even.

I really, really hate my job.