Page 94 of Our Own Light

Once Oliver returned to the surface, he started for home, the soreness in his shoulder torturing him with every step.

Chapter Thirteen

Floyd

Floyd’s throat was tight as he rode the elevator to the surface, his muscles tense from trying to hold in his upset for hours on end. He hadn’t even managed to find a replacement butty for the remainder of his shift. It hadn’t mattered to him that it was against the rules to work alone. It had been too hard to think of working with anyone else, both because he missed Ollie and because he was still on the verge of tears. He couldn’t let others see him this way. Them horrible words— Matt is dead—they had struck him with the force of a bullet. Now all Floyd wanted was to be alone so that he could bleed.

Once Floyd found his car, he stood beside it to wait for his turn at the weigh station. It looked like there was some kind of hold-up. One of the senior men who worked in the mines—a man with silver hair named Ed Allen—looked real upset, mumbling curses and tapping one of his feet. Probably Ed had been waiting for his car for a while. It happened sometimes. Maybe it was stuck somewhere underground. Floyd hoped it would all be sorted out soon. He was teetering on the edge of crying or screaming or maybe even both. He couldn’t let these fine folks be witness to his inevitable, eventual outburst.

Folding his arms in front of his chest, Floyd tried to hold in his upset for a little while longer. Not two minutes later, little Billy Davis came running toward the weight station.

“Sorry, Mister Allen,” Billy huffed, catching his breath. “Accident.”

Floyd crooked an eyebrow.

“Where’s my God-dang car?” Ed asked.

“I was working with that yellow-haired man—uh, Mister Oliver—and the car tipped over.”

Floyd’s stomach sank, plummeting so far and fast it felt like it had fallen to the bottom of the mine shaft. He pushed forward to the front of the line.

“What happened?”

“Mister Oliver was helping me chase them coal cars with the sprags.”

Floyd’s heart was hammering in his chest while he sucked in a series of sharp inhales. “And a car tipped?!”

“Well, yeah, but—”

“Was Ollie hurt?!”

“Yeah, but—”

“Where is he?!”

“Home, I think.”

Immediately, Floyd took off running, leaving his coal car behind and, therefore, leaving his earnings behind, too. As Floyd neared the main road, his hat flew off, but he refused to stop for it. None of these things mattered no more. Bounding through town, Floyd’s mind was racing even faster than his legs, horrible scenes flickering through his mind with every step, like one of them flip books, only the pictures were mismatched, showing Ollie with a crushed hand or a broken leg or missing fingers. Sometimes, Floyd even pictured poor Ollie suffocating beneath a pile of coal, though that wouldn’t make no sense since Ollie had somehow made it home. Still, Floyd couldn’t stop imagining these horrible things.

Floyd had some vague sense that he was still supposed to be sore at Ollie for hollering in the mine—for calling him sweetheart in public and talking about Matt the way he had—but he couldn’t even care about those things now. All Floyd cared about was making sure that Ollie wasn’t hurt too bad. He couldn’t hardly believe that he had wasted so much time afeared of letting himself be with Ollie. Floyd had been letting his worriment over forgetting Matt take over his mind. Ollie had been right. Floyd had been pushing him away. He had been so afeared of losing Matt that he hadn’t even been thinking ’bout how he could have lost Ollie. Forever.

As soon as Floyd reached Ollie’s house, he began pounding his fist on the door, bouncing on the balls of his feet while he waited. When Ollie hadn’t opened up in less than twenty seconds, Floyd started hitting the wood even harder.

“Ollie!” Floyd yelled, so terrified he felt like he might burst out of his skin. “Ollie, open up! Are you in there? Are you hurt?”

Finally, Ollie opened the door.

“Hi,” Ollie said, sounding sheepish.

Floyd’s eyes started roaming over Ollie’s body, searching for injuries. He seemed fine, somehow, though still filthy from work.

Pressing a hand flat to Ollie’s chest, Floyd shoved him backward into the house and followed, kicking the door shut with the heel of his boot.

Ollie started saying, “Sweetheart, I’m sorry for—”

But Floyd placed one hand on either side of his face and cut him off with a hard, impassioned kiss, pressing their lips together with a force that nearly knocked Ollie back again. Heck, he was kissing Ollie so hard that it was barely even a kiss anymore. It was more like he was fixing to meld their faces together.

Once Floyd was satisfied that he had nearly kissed Ollie to death, he pulled away, and then both of them were panting from the intensity of it.

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