When El Buey won two Michelin stars, I was far too young to understand the significance. It was one of the few times in my childhood that I remembered my mother and father happy together. Only as tall as my father’s knees, the memory of Mom and Dad dancing, twirling and laughing in the kitchen, imprinted in my mind.

My mother had on an ankle length dress. The dress had a yellow mustard background with small white daisies. When my parents twirled, the skirt of the dress billowed, the soft cloth brushing my cheeks as they waltzed around me. Joseph had been there too, looking up at our parents and clapping his hands cheerfully. That was so long ago, back when my mother was not yet dissatisfied and unfulfilled being just a mother and wife.

It was only when my father lost a Michelin star did I understand the real implications of Michelin status. I was older then, twelve, and my mother had been gone for a year already. One Michelin star was still notable, still signified an elite caliber restaurant, but coupled with my mother’s departure, my father took the star retraction like a bullet to his chest. 

My mother had been the de facto general manager of El Buey. When she left, my father refused to hire anyone else. All GM responsibilities fell to the wayside or trickled down to Joseph or me as we got older.

One Michelin star meant a ‘very good restaurant.’ Two stars meant ‘excellent cooking, worth a detour’. The coveted three stars meant ‘Exceptional cuisine, worth a special journey.’ When El Buey fell from excellent to very good, my father was inconsolable.

It had been rumored when Gordon Ramsey’s restaurant lost its two Michelin stars, he openly wept. The same Gordon Ramsey who cursed every other word on TV. The same Gordon Ramsey who made other chefs tremble in his wake, actually wept over lost stars. My father did the same.

I’d never seen my father cry before. He didn’t even openly cry when my mother left, but when that one star was snatched from him, what was left of his heart that my mother hadn’t already destroyed, shattered into dust.

Since then, he hadn't been able to get that star back. El Buey retained its one-star Michelin status, but my father was never mollified. Afterwards, my father even won the James Beard Foundation Best Restaurant and Best Chef in the South award, but the loss of his star burrowed deep inside him like a dormant tumor silently metastasizing to other parts of his life. Maybe it was because it happened around the same time my mother left. He never talked about it so I could only guess.

For the last ten years, my father fell into a self-inflicted slump, laser-focused on his oxen and not other aspects of the restaurant. On his trip, he visited Manresa, a Michelin three-star restaurant in Los Gatos, California. For whatever reason, Manresa and Chef Kinch invigorated him. My father returned, energized and vibrant, full of innovative ideas for the restaurant: heirloom wheat for the bread and more selective wine pairings, specifically from the Ribera del Duero region in Spain, for each kind of buey.

Seeing my father buoyed by his new ideas made me happy, but it meant more work for Joseph and me. He began to spend more time in the restaurant with our baker and the sommelier, perfecting the bread and the wine menu. While he implemented the changes, more GM responsibilities fell on us. Not to mention, it was impossible to leave the restaurant for classes with my dad there all the time.

Hating to lie, I faked a cold, but it was the only way to get out of working in the kitchen during the day so I could go to class and see Alex. The lie was a good cover for only a week or so. I could only fake a debilitating enough cold for so long.

To my surprise, my dad had another idea for the restaurant: a website. I’d battled with my dad for a long time about the need to bring the restaurant onto the web. He’d been against it, fiercely claiming he was running a restaurant and not an amateur business that needed gimmicky technology.

I wasn’t sure what Chef Kinch had said to my father. He might have urged my dad to have a website to promote the restaurant and showcase his buey. Whatever happened in California to plant the seed of this idea, I gladly accepted without any further questions.

A website for El Buey was the first step to having an online shop for exporting Dad’s buey. I’d been so obsessed with this idea for years that I taught myself how to make a simple Wordpress website. In fact, I even had one I’d been working on, all ready to go for the day my dad finally allowed his restaurant an online presence. When my dad assigned me the task of making the website, I’d congratulated myself for working ahead.

Telling my dad I would need to work on the website from home during the day, I went to class instead. My nights were still packed with restaurant work though. The new changes to the restaurant meant I needed to take up the GM responsibilities my father didn’t have time to do anymore and running the kitchen when my father was too busy with our baker and sommelier. After I left the restaurant, sometimes as late as midnight, I squeezed in studying before class the next day.

Thursday, during Krishna lunch, I’d actually fallen asleep in the grass, even amongst the chatter of all the students surrounding me. My exhaustion seeped deep into my bones. When my eyes drifted shut, I gave in.

I felt a gentle shake and a kiss on my nose. “Jasmine. Wake up.” Alex’s voice was soft and soothing. “Time for class.”

The mention of class zapped me awake. Jerking my wrist to my face, I checked the time, relieved that I still had ten minutes to get to class. “I fell asleep. I’m sorry, Alex. We didn’t get to spend time together.” I cupped his face with my hand.

He clasped his hand over mine. “Don’t worry about it. You are an adorable sleeper, especially when you snore. It’s sexy.” He closed his eyes pretending to snore loudly, sounding like an elephant with a wheezing cold.

Playfully, I hit his shoulder, stopping him from continuing his reenactment of my sleep. “I do not snore!”

He waved his hands around him, indicating the students in the grass. “I think we should ask the few hundred people sitting around us that have been listening to your snoring for the last half hour.”

Grimacing, I covered my face with my hand. “Omigod! Did I really snore?”

Alex wrapped his arms around me. “No, but it would be cute if you did.”

Poking him in his ribs and sending him into a fit of laughs, I kissed him on the lips. His chuckles blew merrily into my mouth.

That night, my father asked me to help him and our sommelier with the wine pairings. My father rarely asked me for my opinion with the menu. I jumped at the chance to be an active part in the wine selections, but it meant I didn’t leave the restaurant until close to two in the morning. It was four by the time I collapsed into bed after hastily studying for an exam the next day.

Because Friday was a gloomy rainy day, Alex and I had lunch in the Reitz Union in the cafeteria. Sitting at a table, waiting for Alex to come back with our lunches, I put my head down to rest my eyes for a few minutes.

Before I knew it, I'd fallen asleep with Alex, once again, waking me with a softness in his voice. "Sleepyhead. Time to wake up."

I opened my eyes mortified. “I did it again.”

He nodded. “Yup.” He pushed the hair out of my eyes. “You’re working at maximum speed, Jasmine. Is there any way you can take some time off from the restaurant?”

Lifting my head up from arms, I opened my mouth to protest with a wild-eyed look on my face. Alex raised his hands and said, “Okay. Okay. It was just a suggestion.” He kissed me on my forehead. “I just hate to see you so exhausted.”

Friday nights were always busy nights for us. My father usually confined himself to the kitchen to make sure everything ran efficiently. It was a good thing we were especially busy that night because Alex had shown up at the hostess stand, asking Nia if he could see me. My dad was too swamped in the kitchen to see him.

It was a stroke of luck our regular Friday hostess, Viv, a high school senior at Gainesville High, had the night off for Winter Formal. Viv was a sweet girl, but she ran anything out of normal protocol by my father. She was a good kid like that. If she’d been there, I would have been busted. But my dear cousin Nia, knowing how my father would react, escorted Alex to the buey haven behind the restaurant.

I was in the kitchen helping Lance, our salad guy, catch up on his orders when Nia skimmed by me whispering into my ear, “Man. Cave. You.” Nia and I had been talking cryptically like this since children in an effort to evade and confuse our parents. I knew exactly what she meant.

Hurrying to the cave, I found Alex, head tilted up in awe, admiring my father’s handiwork. He turned around to the sound of me opening the door. Locking the door quickly, I ran to him and jumped up, wrapping my legs around his waist. “What are you doing here?”

“I had to see you.” Alex kissed me deeply, holding me up with his strong hands.

I could feel Alex hardening as we kissed. My limbs tingled down to my fingertips and my toes. I wanted him badly, but I jumped down off him, immediately straightening my chef coat suddenly nervous about the fact my father was only a few yards away in the kitchen.

Alex reached for my hand. “I bought condoms.” I looked up at him, my eagerness brimming. “I’m ready whenever you are.”

The words spilled out of me quickly. “I’m ready.”

He pulled me to him. “Can you stay the night with me tonight after work? I promise I’ll bring you back as early as you need to be back here for work.” His face was strained. From the looks of his pants tented high at the crotch, his entire body strained in desire for me. I felt a tingle between my own legs wanting him just as much.

“I’ll meet you two blocks from here on Magnolia and Union. Wait for me. I’ll be there in fifteen minutes.”

Alex’s brown tourmaline eyes gleamed. “I can’t wait, Jasmine.” He kissed me on the lips.

“Hurry! Before my father sees you.” Alex ran out of the cave quickly. Taking deep breaths, I gazed at the Barossas that had been maturing for six months, above my head. My father planned to allow this slab of meat to be used within the next week. Before that, the Barossas had been an eight-year-old slate grey ox who followed my dad in the paddock with charming obedience. Soon guests of the restaurants would enjoy the ox, finally awarding him the freedom of no longer being under my father’s command. The Barossas, a dead ox slung up in my father’s lair, had more chance of freedom than I did.

Despite the realization of this hard reality, I took a chance. My body couldn’t ache for Alex much longer. I needed him that night.

Ambling into the kitchen, I feigned a pained face of nausea, bent over and holding my stomach with my hands. My brother was preparing cecina de vaca, looking over to me, “Jas, you okay?”

I shook my head, grimacing and still gripping my stomach. “No. I thought I had just a cold or something, but now my stomach hurts.” Lying to my brother was tricky. We knew each other so well. Either he picked up on my acting or I had genuinely fooled him, but he stepped away from me with a foul look on his face. “Gross. Go home. I’ll tell Dad you aren’t feeling well.”

“You think you’ll be okay tonight without me?” I suddenly felt guilty for leaving all the restaurant work on my brother’s shoulders.

He kicked me in the butt with his Dansko shoe. “No one wants to catch your diarrhea. Get out of here.” He then laughed hysterically. At nineteen, he still loved diarrhea jokes.

I walked out of the restaurant stooped over. The staff wished me a good night with sympathetic nods and pats on my back. When I was a block away from the restaurant, I dropped my sick act and ran the rest of the way to meet Alex.