Page 101 of Never To Be Mine

“Come back tonight,” I said.

“You’ve got yourself a deal.” She rose up on her toes and kissed me, slow and sweet, tasting like coffee and goat cheese and everything good. “Don’t let my dad keep you too long. I saw you first.”

“I’ll tell him you said that.”

After she left, I pulled myself together, showered, and pointed my car toward the Young at Heart offices. I made it downtown in record time. The building was nearly empty. A security guard waved me through after checking my name off a list, and I rode the elevator up alone, still riding the high of the morning.

Dan was waiting in the conference room with two large coffees and a spread of mockups already covering the table.

He handed me one of the coffees. “Thanks for coming in on a weekend.”

“Are you kidding? I’ve been waiting a year for a meeting like this.”

We got to work. The design team had put together six packaging concepts for the burger. We spread them out across the table. Two of them were immediate no’s. One looked like a frozen diet dinner from the nineties, and another had so much green on it, it practically screamed this will taste like lawn clippings. That was exactly the stereotype we were fighting.

“This one,” I said, tapping a design with a clean butcher-paper look and bold black lettering. “It looks like real food. Not a science experiment.”

“My favorite too.” Dan pulled it closer. “People eat with their eyes first. If it looks like something they’d actually crave, they’ll give it a shot. If it looks healthy, we’ve lost them before they ever take a bite.”

We debated fonts. We debated whether “plant-based” should be front and center or smaller, under the product name. I argued for keeping it prominent, owning what it was instead of hiding it. Dan agreed but wanted the word “burger” to be the biggest thing on the box.

“Burger first,” he said. “That’s the promise. The plant-based part is the bonus, not the headline.”

“B Well Prime Burger,” I said, testing it out loud. It had a nice ring to it.

By mid-afternoon we’d narrowed it down to two finalists and mapped out a rough timeline. Focus groups in three weeks. Production ramp-up after that. Launch inside ninety days if everything broke right. It was finally happening. I still couldn’t fully wrap my head around it.

Dan leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes. “You know what’s funny? I can’t remember the last time I had a fast food burger.”

I laughed. “Same.”

“And here we are betting a small fortune that our burger tastes better.”

“I eat junk food here and there,” I admitted. “I’m not a monk. Pizza after a long night, chips at Micah’s place when we’re watching a game. But fast food burgers specifically? I generally avoid them. They always sound good in theory and then I feel like garbage after.”

“That’s the market we’re going after,” Dan said. “People who want the burger experience without the regret.” He pulled his laptop around and clicked open a document. “Speaking of which, check out the announcement our PR team released today.”

I read through the press release. Young at Heart is thrilled to announce a partnership with B Well on an amazing new no-meat burger, coming soon. It went on to highlight the success of B Well Balance and the mission both companies shared.

“This is great,” I said.

Dan smiled, and there was something almost boyish in it. “There’s already decent buzz, Hollis. People have been speculating since the commercial dropped about what’s next. Industry blogs are watching you. People really pay attention to what you’re up to, which is great for business.”

That still surprised me sometimes. I’d spent so long trying to prove I wasn’t just a famous last name that I hadn’t fully processed the moment I’d become a name people followed on my own.

We kept at it for another couple of hours, going over retail targets. Then we talked about the shakes, which were finally starting to roll out of the refitted bottling plant. Around five, my phone buzzed against the table.

Juno: How’s my father treating you?

I smiled down at the screen like the idiot she always turned me into.

I typed back: Demanding. Relentless. Reminds me of someone. I miss you.

Her reply came fast: Miss you more.

We wrapped up a little after six. I headed out into the early evening. The sun was dropping toward the ocean, the sky going orange and pink over the city.

I was exhausted. And I was starving.