Chapter 34
HOLLIS
Iwas elbow-deep in spreadsheet hell when Toby burst through my office door like the building was on fire.
“Hollis, we have a massive problem.”
I didn’t look up from my laptop. “Can it wait? I’m trying to figure out why our shipping costs spiked last week.”
“No. It absolutely cannot wait.” He was already crossing the room, his own laptop open in his hands. “You need to see this. Right now.”
Something in his voice made me look up. Toby was the most laid-back person I knew. Nothing rattled him. But right now, he looked genuinely panicked.
“What’s going on?”
He set his laptop on my desk and turned it toward me. “Burgergate.”
I watched the video play. It took me a second to realize what I was looking at. Some random angle, shot from a distance. Some guy eating alone. My stomach dropped.
That guy was me.
The timestamp in the corner showed yesterday evening. Hours after the press release announcing the burger partnership had gone out.
“Shit,” I breathed.
“It gets worse.” Toby scrolled down to show me the view count. Over two million. The comments section was a warzone.
I felt my blood run cold as I read through them. People thought I was a hypocrite. Thought the burger must be terrible if I was eating fast food instead. They called me a joke. Influencer energy.
“Burgergate?” I said in disbelief.
“One of many hashtags.”
“How long has this been up?”
“Went up last night. It’s trending on every platform. Burgergate is the number two topic on Twitter.”
I ran my hands through my hair, my mind racing. “This is bad.”
“Yeah.” Toby looked miserable. “The backlash is intense. People are saying you don’t believe in your own product.”
I reached for my phone, only to remember I hadn’t charged it last night and it was now sitting in the other room on the charger where I’d left it hours ago. I’d been so focused on catching up on work that I hadn’t even thought to check it.
I bolted from my chair and ran to the other room. If my phone hadn’t been plugged in, it would have been dead with all the notifications. Missed calls. Text messages. Notifications stacking on top of notifications.
Several were from Juno. My heart sank. I called her immediately.
Straight to voicemail.
“No, no, no.” I tried again. Voicemail again.
I sent a text: Juno, I just saw. Please call me. We can fix this.
I called her office.
“Young at Heart, this is Kari.”
“Kari, it’s Hollis. I need to talk to Juno. It’s urgent.”
There was a pause. “She’s not available right now.”
“Please. I know she’s upset, but I need to talk to her.”
“She’s in a meeting with her father and the legal team.” Kari’s voice was professional but not unkind. “I’ll let her know you called.”
The line went dead.
I stood there, staring at my phone, feeling the walls closing in. The legal team. That couldn’t be good. That meant they were discussing the partnership, reviewing contracts, figuring out their options.
I’d fucked up. Badly. I called Micah.
“Can’t you go one week without going viral?” he said when he answered.
“You’ve seen it.”
“Everyone’s seen it, bro. It’s everywhere.” I heard him sigh. “How could you fuck up the timing that bad? What were you thinking?”
“I was doing research!” I started pacing, unable to stand still. “I wanted to taste the competition. See what we were up against. I had no idea someone was filming me, fucking creep.”
I told him about meeting with Dan, about the offhand comment about not remembering the last time either of us had eaten a fast food burger. I had gotten curious how we stacked up to the competition.
“So you were doing legitimate product research,” Micah said slowly.
“Exactly.”
“And you didn’t think to, I don’t know, do that research somewhere private? Somewhere you wouldn’t be recognized and filmed?”
“Obviously not.” I rubbed my face with my free hand. “I wasn’t thinking. I was hungry and curious and it seemed like a good idea at the time.”
“Well, it wasn’t.” Micah’s voice was gentle but firm. “Look, I get what you were trying to do. It makes sense from a development standpoint. But optics-wise? You fucked up.”
“I know.”
“The problem is context. Without the full story, it just looks like you don’t believe in your own product. Like you’re pushing a healthy burger you don’t eat yourself.”
I sank into a chair, feeling defeated. “Should I try explaining myself? Put out my own video in response?”
“I don’t know, man. I’m not sure how to handle this one.” He paused. “You need to talk to Juno. Come up with a strategy with them.”
“I’m sure they hate me right now,” I said, sighing.
“Maybe.” Micah’s bluntness was oddly comforting. At least he wasn’t sugarcoating it. “But sitting around feeling sorry for yourself isn’t going to help. Get your ass over there and fight for this. Fight for your company.”
He was right.
“Thanks, Micah.”
“Anytime. And Hollis? For what it’s worth, I believe you. You’re a lot of things, but you’re not a hypocrite. I know you eat your own burgers because you’ve made everyone in the family try them. I know you actually care about this stuff.”
“I appreciate that.”
We hung up. I needed a plan.
Toby came back into the room with two bottles of water. He handed me one and sat down across from me, his expression miserable.
“This is my fault,” he said quietly.
I looked up from my phone. “What?”
“I should have been there. I should have been with you documenting the whole thing. That’s literally my job—capturing content, providing context.
” He shook his head. “If I’d been there, we could have filmed you doing the taste test properly.
Explained what you were doing. Made it clear you were researching the competition, not choosing it over our product. ”
“Toby, that’s ridiculous. I was just tired and hungry. And despite what people online seem to believe, I’ve never claimed to eat healthy all the fucking time. And I’m not going to call you and have you drop everything when I get a hankering to have a snack, just to provide proof to people.”
“Still,” he said. “It would have been good content. I could have made it a whole thing. ‘Hollis Blackwell tries the competition’ or whatever.” He looked genuinely upset. “But I wasn’t there, and now everything is falling apart.”
“This is not your fault. You can’t be with me twenty-four seven.
You have a life outside of B Well. And I’m the idiot who decided to eat that burger in public without thinking about how it would look.
I forgot how much people obsess over my meals.
And it didn’t even occur to me it might be a problem because we’d just announced our own burger. ”
“It’s definitely a mountain out of a molehill situation,” he said. “But that’s how the internet works. It’s what guys like me hope happens. A ten-second video blows up and you’ve got a ton of free publicity.”
I took a drink of water. “Either way, this is on me. Not you. I made the choice. I deal with the consequences.”
He didn’t look convinced, but he nodded. I tried calling Juno again. The phone rang once before going straight to voicemail. She’d declined the call. That felt worse than if she’d just ignored it.
I sent another text: Please call me.
Even as I typed it, I wasn’t sure how we were going to fix anything. The damage was done. I’d eaten a competitor’s real burger. The timing couldn’t have been worse if I’d planned it.
I opened Twitter and immediately regretted it. The online fans who’d helped build B Well into what it was—the people who’d shared my content, bought my products, defended me when critics said I was just another rich kid playing entrepreneur—they were turning on me.
“Hollis Blackwell is a fraud. Never buying B Well again.”
“Imagine announcing a plant-based burger and then immediately eating beef. The hypocrisy is unreal.”
“Young at Heart must be pissed. They hitched their wagon to this clown.”
I scrolled further, feeling sicker with each comment.
They weren’t just coming after me. They were going after Juno and me as a pair, posting screenshots from that makeup video.
Some body language expert gave his analysis, creating conspiracy theories about whether our relationship was even real or just a PR stunt.
And Young at Heart was catching the worst of it. People were digging up the rat piss incident, rehashing every misstep the company had made over the past few years, questioning their judgment for partnering with me not once but twice.
Everything we’d built over the last few months was crumbling in real time. My split-second decision could cost Juno the company she dedicated her life to. I understood how important it was to her and why.
I set my phone face down on the desk and pressed the heels of my hands against my eyes.
Could I really lose everything because of a shitty burger and the consequential gut rot that still sat rotting in my gut?
The irony wasn’t lost on me. I’d eaten that burger to prove ours was better, and now I might lose the chance to ever bring ours to market.
My stomach churned, though whether from stress or the lingering effects of last night’s poor dietary choice, I couldn’t tell.
“What do we do?” Toby asked quietly.
I dropped my hands and looked at him. “I don’t know. I need to talk to Juno. And Dan. I spent the day with him and I feel like we really connected.”
“And he’s your girlfriend’s father,” he said nonchalantly.
I didn’t have the energy to argue and deny. What was the point? Depending on how this whole disaster shook out, it might be a moot point.
“Yeah,” I muttered.
She might never be mine if I couldn’t fix what I’d broken.
I stood up, unable to sit still any longer. “But I have to try. I can’t just sit here and watch everything fall apart without fighting for it.”
I grabbed my keys and headed for the door.
“Where are you going?” Toby called after me.
“Young at Heart. If Juno won’t answer my calls, I’ll go there in person. They can’t ignore me if I’m standing in their lobby.”
“That might make things worse.”
I stopped in the doorway and turned back to him. “I don’t see how. Either way, doing nothing isn’t an option.”