The front door slammed hard enough to rattle the dishes in the sink.

Andy didn’t bother kicking off his boots—just stalked straight to the fridge, wrenched it open, and grabbed the first beer he saw. The cap hit the counter with a sharp ping.

You didn’t look up from the newspaper at the kitchen table. "Rough day at the office?" you deadpanned.

He took a long swig, throat working, then exhaled through his nose. "Pit’s closed." Two words, flat as a funeral drum.

The crossword pencil stilled in your fingers.

A beat. Then—

"All of it?"

"Every fucking seam." His knuckles whitened around the bottle. "Management called us in at three, handed out redundancy packets like it was bloody Christmas." A bitter chuckle. "Merry fucking Grimley, lads."

The silence stretched. You knew what this meant—not just the job, but the weight of it. The Barrow men had dug coal since the Victorian era. Andy’d bitched about the dust, the shifts, the ache in his back… but it was his. Until today.

Andy’s eyes flicked to yours—dark and exhausted and suddenly too honest. "What the hell am I supposed to do now?"

The question hung between you, weighted with all the things you never said. Like that night after his twenty-first birthday, when he’d kissed you against the bus stop and you’d both pretended it never happened. Like the way he still moved your coffee mug to the left side of the counter every morning, just like you’d liked it since primary school.