She’s dancing on the bar, her head is thrown back and she drinks in the night. The bass pounds and the room moves with her. She’s laughing and she feels so alive. The molecules that make up her thrum and she feels as if she’s somewhere between space and time. She’s taking shots of sprite and chasing them with vodka. This. This is what life was about. Not stuffy hospitals and grandfathers with Alzheimer’s. Life was about being alive. Life was about putting on winged eyeliner that’s sharp enough to cut and dancing on bars. Maybe she’ll post that on her poetry Instagram later.
She feels absolutely electric.
Her friends left hours ago. She hadn’t meant to end up in this club. She was supposed to just get a few drinks with her old college roommates from NYU. So she had gone to meet them at their favorite Hotpot restaurant, tape recorder still in her purse, and had inhaled the Maotai, relishing the burn in her throat. She had gotten blasted, reminiscing about how Lily once beat a frat bro at a beer chugging contest or how Mel used to take a shot before her finals. Her friends just smiled, commenting on how she still hadn’t changed and then turned in for the night. They all had jobs. It was a Wednesday night. They couldn’t go out. So she went out alone.
Fuck them. Grace thought. Fuck all of them. I’m so alive!
But at the same time, there’s a burning in her eyes, and she feels like she’s out of her body, watching her hips swing. She needs a breath of air. She hops off the bar. The men watching her boo. The room is pounding and moving too fast.
She stumbles to the bathroom and empties her gut into the toilet bowl. She feels like sobbing, but instead, she picks herself up, rinses her mouth, takes a – several – hit from her pen, reapplies her lipstick and offers mascara to an anonymous drunk girl. The anonymous drunk girl thanks her and is telling Grace that she’s the prettiest girl alive. The anonymous drunk girl cries about a cheating ex and Grace’s body comforts her. Grace isn’t comforting her; Grace is threading between space and time. Grace is examining the walls, how they hum and breathe.
Eventually, she untangles herself from the anonymous drunk girl and stumbles to the rooftop bar’s balcony area. Maybe the walls wouldn’t move so much there. She bursts into the night air.
“Whoa there.” It’s a man’s voice. Ew. Men. Grace moves to leave. “Hey, you’re that girl that was dancing on the bar.”
She pauses. She’s not going to let some man kick her off her balcony. She’s Grace fucking Li, a 23-year-old artist in New York. She’s not in a hospital room in Texas anymore. She’s in a tiny black dress and has sharp eyeliner on. She’s fucking immortal. “Who’s asking?”
The man holds his arms up. There’s mirth in his eyes and fuck he’s hot. He’s 6 foot tall with a head of almost white-blonde hair but she’s stuck in his eyes: hazel with flecks of gold sunlight. The flashing lights of the club illuminate high cheekbones, the hollows of his cheeks, and she sucks in the warm night air. Fuck, he’s so hot.
“James.” He sticks out his hand. Fuck, he definitely knows she was just eye fucking him, but he’s returning the favor. “James McIntyre. What’s your name?”
She studies his hand. Part of her wants to run, but another part of her that wants to be 23-year-old Grace Li artist in New York so badly grabs his hand and pulls him into a hug. “Grace.” She whispers into his ear, breathing in sea-salt and driftwood. “Grace Li.”
“Hi Grace.” He whispers back. “Why are we whispering?”
Laughter sings through her chest and suddenly she’s kissing him. She’s drinking his oxygen, pulling it deep into her lungs. Maybe she should’ve asked what major he was first. Philosophy majors who become corporate lawyers are never good news.
But kissing him feels like breathing again. Kissing him reminds her of a sun-soaked trip to the park with her grandfather. Kissing him reminds her of her grandfather’s smile, how his sharp edges softened for just one moment, how pride oozed from his voice like honey when he praised her for the poem she had written about what it meant to be Chinese, what it meant to be a Li. Kissing him reminds her of buttery sunlight and the feeling of being loved. Kissing him is love. She decides then and there that she loves him. But she’s not sure what she loves more: him or the fact that with him she feels like she has permission to breathe again.
Thank you for reading part 3 of Becoming Woman by our columnist Amanda Chen! Stay tuned for more works by Amanda in the future and read more about her here. Three more parts of Becoming Woman will be published throughout the coming weeks.