Free Coercion by Lux Zakari

spend it with you.”
    “Michael, you forget we’re not exclusive anymore, so you can’t have all these expectations of me. What’d you even want to do, anyway? Obviously not go out. I know you have about twelve cents since quitting your distinguished gas station gig. So that must mean you wanted to fuck me then drink all the beer Lisa and I bought. Am I getting close?”
    Michael gave the pillow another punch. “What the hell is wrong with you?”
    Breeze sighed as she painted her fingernails cherry red at her vanity table. “Calm down and quit yelling at me. It’s embarrassing for us both. And stop hitting stuff. That’s just stupid.”
    “Doesn’t the fact I’m your boyfriend mean something to you?”
    “Actually, it doesn’t mean anything to me because you are n ’ t my boyfriend. We’ve gone over this before, remember?”
    Michael remembered all right, but had been hoping she was the one who’d forgotten. He struggled to remain in control, hating he had no claim on her, that it was acceptable for her to sleep him with one day, and the next sidle up to Tom Courpel with bedroom eyes for all the world to see.
    She twisted the cap back on the nail polish. “I’m done being the girl who’s supposed to drop everything I’m doing just because you wander over and wanna screw. Sorry, baby, it doesn’t work like that. Not anymore. I want something more.”
    “You’re not being fair.” Michael trembled, the evening going pear-shaped and fast. “And I don’t see how you can say all this to me, but not hold Karl Seegan and whoever the hell else to the same standards.”
    Breeze turned in her chair to face Michael and crossed one slim leg over the other. “You’re still talking about Karl Seegan? That was a whole month ago.”
    He leaned back on the bed and propped himself up with his hands. “So was the last time we had sex.”
    “You’re so dramatic.” She waved her hands back and forth in an effort to dry the polish. “It was only last weekend.”
    “Yeah? And whose turn is it this weekend?” He reached for his half-empty soda and twisted the cap to the left, then the right, wondering why he perpetually tortured himself by asking questions sure to have ugly answers.
    Breeze turned back to the mirror and rummaged through her cosmetics, careful not to smear her nail color. “It’s none of your business.”
    “Tell me who you’re going out with tonight.” The bottle crumpled in his grip as his panic mounted.
    “The girls.”
    “What’re you gonna be doing?”
    “Girly things you wouldn’t be interested in.” She snapped open a container of blush and quickly applied some of the pink makeup to the apples of her cheeks.
    “Great, I’ll drive.”
    “Michael!” Breeze breathed out an incredulous laugh. “Why are you being so weird?”
    He stood and threw the soda bottle in the trashcan near the vanity. “Because if I thought you were actually going to go out with the girls, I wouldn’t have asked to join you.” He grabbed his coat from the bed. “I’m out of here.”
    “Don’t go away mad,” she called after him, but he had already slammed the door behind him.
    * * * *
    “You have the hang of this yet?” Daniel’s mouth curved into a smile as he sat cross-legged on the living room floor and watched Valerie attempt to fan the playing cards in her hand without dropping them.
    “Yes, a full house beats everything.” Her brow furrowed as she studied her cards.
    “Only technically. It beats everything that’s not a four of a kind, straight flush or royal flush, at least.”
    Valerie shot him an exasperated look. “I couldn’t even shuffle the deck before tonight. Give me some credit.”
    Daniel winked. “You’re right, you’ve grown up a lot in the past hour.”
    Her mother appeared in the doorway. “Your father and I are going to bed,” she said with a warm, knowing smile as she toyed with her gold necklace, sliding the pendant up and down the chain. “You kids play