Begin Again | ongoing

fourteen

Sunny does not feel good. She feels too much and not enough and her lungs are too small, her heart too big, her head fractured into a million pieces that she can't puzzle back together.

"I'll be back in a sec," she says, mood souring as she scoots out of the booth and stumbles across the bar to the neon signposted toilets, where she finds an empty stall and locks herself inside.

She isn't going to be sick. That'll probably come later but for now, she just needs to breathe deep and wait for this moment to pass because five minutes ago she was having a ball and now she feels this aching hole in her core.

Despite how busy the bar is, the loos are relatively quiet. Someone flushes in another stall and Sunny listens to the tap run, then the whir of a weak hand dryer. She doesn't move. Someone else comes in and Sunny's still sitting there on the lid of the loo, elbows on her knees and her warm hands pressed over her warm face, which has gone weirdly numb. She wonders if she's allergic to alcohol or if something is terribly wrong, another symptom of a brain tumour perhaps, and she doesn't move because she doesn't know what she wants to do next. So she closes her eyes and listens to another woman wash her hands and leave, and she hugs herself for one minute, two, three. Until the door opens again.

"Sunny?" Delilah's voice. The pressure in Sunny's cheat eases.

"Hi."

"Are you throwing up?"

"No. I'm okay."

"Just because you're not throwing up doesn't mean you're okay," Delilah says. She leans against the only locked cubicle. Sunny looks at her feet, at the strip of dark brown ankle between Delilah's shoe and the bottom of the door. "Want to come out?"

She doesn't answer.

"Want me to come in?"

There isn't space in this cubicle for both of them, though the image tickles Sunny. She envisages their bodies wedged between the loo and the wall, someone's foot in the toilet bowl.

"I'm okay," she says again. "I'm not used to drinking. Does it always feel this weird?"

Delilah chuckles. "I wouldn't know. I tend to stop if I start feeling weird."

Sunny unlocks the cubicle and almost faceplants the floor when she loses her footing as she stands. Delilah catches her and together they stumble against the sink, which lets out an ominous creak.

"Oh, shit. Let's go before that thing breaks," Sunny says, back to laughing. She's not sure about this whole drinking alcohol business: her emotions are a seesaw. No, a rollercoaster, because this isn't a predictable back and forth but a wild up and down and upside down that feels like someone grabbing her shirt and tugging her in a new direction every few minutes. Perhaps I didn't drink enough, she thinks as Delilah leads her back to their booth, where her unfinished drink is waiting. It can't be that alcoholic, she reckons, because it tastes like orange and strawberry and sugar and it goes down so easily, a syrupy thickness at the bottom of her glass.

"Where's Fen gone?" she asks when she clocks that there are only four of them at the table. Ravi nods at the dancefloor, and they all turn to watch as Fenfen uses a skinny, tatted white guy like a pole, her body shimmying and grinding on his as he tries to figure out where to put his hands. He decides on her waist, pulling her against him, and he has to bend his neck at an awkward angle when she reaches up to kiss him. She has such a thing for tall guys, even though any guy over five eight is a giant to her. This dude is well over six feet. Even in her strappy heels, Fenfen only just comes up to his shoulder but he doesn't seem to care.

"She's found the only straight guy in here," Fraser says, wrinkling his nose at them. "Dude can't even bust a move. Wanna show them how it's done?"

Ravi protests but allows his boyfriend to drag him onto the floor and when the song changes to It's Raining Men, Fraser hollers and breaks out the moves. He's surprisingly good; his hips have a life of their own and he knows how to hit every beat of the song, using Ravi – poor Ravi with his two left feet – as his prop. Sunny creases up watching them, perched right on the edge of the booth as she jives in her seat, head bobbing and hair swinging. She and Delilah are the only ones at the table, but they aren't alone for long before a leggy redhead with bold make-up and a bolder dress saunters over, trailing her hand along the table top before she rests her hip against it and raises her eyebrows at Sunny.