Waiting for Levi

DAY: 18.5
LOCATION: Bali, Singapore

I arrived in Bali to a confirmation email from Levi - he had booked the room for the extra night. What a relief to not be playing hopscotch around the city in the wee hours of the morning! I did feel bad though about canceling on my teacher at the eleventh hour. I sent him an apology from the gate.

Me: Thank you so much for opening your doors (if only through email) if I end up marrying this Levi character, you and Camille are both invited to the wedding!
Teach: well… ok ☺ we should have invited him to stay here with you! ☺

I laughed out loud in the middle of the airport. While it would’ve made for an unbelievable story, the thought of having sex in my high school teacher’s house at 31 years of age with a guy I’d just started seeing was… too ridiculous even for me.

Speaking of sex, I was getting nervous. Not that I didn’t want to – I definitely did. But Monika had advised me against it, and I knew she was probably right.

“Why can’t you guys just wait? If you really like each other, it’ll be better in the long run,” she recommended. “Sex just makes things so complicated.”

Indeed it does. But considering the chemistry between us, and the circumstances, I gave the odds of us holding off a 1/10,000. Bring on the complications!

I got to the Hyatt around 2:30am. The receptionist greeted me warmly. She looked ready to shoot a luxury car commercial – perfect hair, perfect skin, perfect nails. I, on the other hand, looked like I’d just gotten out of a Toyota car wreck – matted hair, dark eye circles and broken out skin, chipped nails. I felt really out of place, and yet she treated me like I belonged to the Social Register.

“We’ll just need a credit card to place a hold for $500,” she purred. $500?! Levi does not mess around! I gave her my best debutante smile as I handed her my card, trying not to reveal my true emotions.

Which were excitement and panic. The second I opened the door to our room, my mind set off to the races. It was so… nice. The separate living and bedroom areas, the 800,000,000 count cotton king bed, the Jacuzzi tub. I stripped down in front of the bathroom mirror with its vanity lighting. What was I doing here?

It’s not that I hadn’t experienced luxury. I had, thanks to the surplus of wealthy men in Los Angeles who appreciate “beauty and brains.” Private jets with celebrities, spectacular weekends at $20 million dollar villas in Cabo, an exotic Moroccan New Year with the former editor of French Vogue. I’d hung around the 1 percent.

But as I stood under the rainfall showerhead, wiping myself clean, I felt something different. Sure, it was “only the Hyatt,” but the casualness with which Levi booked it made me realize the league he was playing in. A league I admittedly enjoyed playing in, but no longer felt the need to play in. A league that would put me in the red quick, based on the current lifestyle I’d chosen. The minimalist wandering writer.

I suddenly felt like I was 20 again, a struggling waitress who only went out to eat when invited. I remembered a drunken conversation one night with my best friend Joey, when I cried to him about being a user.

“Amy, you’re a lot of fun. I love having you around, and I know you can’t afford the places I want to take you, and I can, so don’t worry about it,” he reassured me. Not that it stopped me from feeling guilty. Or inferior. Or like I didn’t belong. Or something.

Still, this was different. Because I liked Levi. I’d been fantasizing about him, imagining what a future might look like with him, doing all of the things I shouldn’t be doing with someone I’d spent a total of 9 hours with. And now I was laying in a bed wearing next to nothing and only just realizing how very little we knew each other. My blood pulsed.

The door opened around 5am. I awoke from a sort of lucid dream and considered the options. I wanted to run out into the foyer and throw my arms around him, the way I used to greet James after weeks apart. But that felt… un-Hyatt like. Alternatively I could say “hello” and alert him to my awakeness, or I could just let him do his thing and pretend to be asleep.

I laid there quietly and listened to him unpack. The shower started, and my body tensed. He was only a few meters away, nude, water washing over him. The suspense of that moment would never leave me.

“Good morning,” I cooed softly when he finally entered the bedroom.

“You’re awake?” His accent melted me. How powerful sound is. In the beginning, there was the Word.

“I just woke up,” I lied.

He slid in beside me. I wrapped my arms around him, his back soft, his skin perfect. Our bodies merged effortlessly, their intuition much stronger than my fears. He kissed me gently, and everything else slipped away.