This paper aims to explore how Chinese learners of English process metaphorical expressions like "attack one's proposal" and understand the metaphorically used lexical items like "attack." Previous research shows conflicting results regarding the processing of figurative expressions by L2 learners; in particular, it is unknown whether learners always access the literal meaning of a figurative expression prior to the derivation of the figurative meaning. 81 Chinese learners of English at four different proficiency levels and 21 British English native speakers participated in a self-paced reading task, in which they read sentences containing three types of metaphorical expressions and answered a comprehension question after each sentence. Three types of metaphorical expressions were investigated: expressions shared by Chinese and English, expressions only available in Chinese, and expressions only available in English. The results reveal that less proficient learners favor a literal-first processing pattern, while more proficient learners can access the metaphorical meaning of a metaphorical expression directly. They also show that learners' processing patterns are influenced by the cross-linguistic availability of metaphorical expressions. These findings lead to a possible model of L2 metaphorical expression acquisition within a current bilingual lexicon framework (Kroll & Stewart, 1994).