A Ship in Harbor is Safe

Athena runs a hand through her damp hair, standing in front of the open fridge. Carefully, she sifts through the bottles in the fridge – one shelf of water, another of Gatorade and the third holds a twelve pack of beer and a bottle of wine. The closest thing to food in the refrigerator lies within the shelves of the door – condiments.

Closing the fridge, Athena opens the large freezer door. A couple of Hungry Man dinners, a few of containers of meat, and a box of ice pops barely take up the space of an entire shelf in the huge freezer. “This is great,” she mumbles, closing the cool stainless steel door, “we’re gonna starve.”

“That was the plan, actually.”

She jumps slightly, spinning around to see Sidney leaning back against the large, island counter. “You do that again, it may just be you starving. It’s like you’re trying to give me a heart attack, or something.”

“I didn’t mean to scare you,” he smirks, pulling himself up onto the counter. His bare feet dangle a short distance away from the wooden floors.

Athena does the same thing on the opposite counter, although her bare feet are much further away from the floor. “So, what is the plan for food, exactly?”

“I think we’re gonna have to go get some groceries,” Sidney smirks.

“It’s,” Athena turns to look at the stove’s clock, “three in the morning. What grocery store is open at this hour?”



“Does Max text you at odd hours of the night, too?” Athena asks, not looking up from her phone.

Sidney looks back at her, trailing behind him and the nearly empty cart. “No, he doesn’t.”

“Then forget I said anything,” Athena stops next to Sidney, finally looking up from the message Max sent her.

The look on Sidney’s face is blank, but his eyes seem to have changed. It’s hard to see, with the shadow of his baseball cap blocking his eyes.

She shrugs, stuffing her phone into her hoodie pocket. “I usually don’t reply to him. He seems drunk most of the time.”

“That’s probably because he is,” Sidney says, not moving.

Athena steps closer to Sidney, nearly standing toe-to-toe with him. She whispers, looking up at him, “hey, stop being upset.”

“I’m not upset,” Sidney whispers back.

With a playful smirk on her face, Athena pulls Sidney’s hat off of his head.

His thick, dark curls almost fall over his slightly darkened, hazel eyes.

Slowly, she pushes the hat back on his head with the brim pointing to the shelf behind him. The ends of his hair stick out in nearly every direction, giving him a goofy, boyish look. “You should wear your hat like that more often.”

“And why is that?” Sidney smirks, watching the blonde woman cross her arms.

She shrugs, “it looks cute on you.”

As Athena realizes what she says, a heat crawls up the sides of her neck and settles into her ears. She quickly bows her head, focusing in on her sandals and light pink toenails. You just called him cute, she scolds herself, of all the things you could’ve called him… you chose cute.

Sidney puts the baseball cap on her head, backwards, which makes her look up. A smirk is playing on his lips and he gives her an approving nod, “it looks cute on you, too.”

The short blonde follows Sidney, biting her lip and resisting the urge to cover her face with the sleeve ends of the hoodie that Sidney gave her to wear on their early morning Walmart adventure.

“You like Frosted Flakes?” Sidney asks, standing with his arms crossed.

Leaning against the cart, Athena smiles, “I’ll pretty much eat anything, Sid.”

“How about Frosted Mini Wheats?”

This time, Athena couldn’t contain her giggles. She reaches behind her head, pulling the brim of the hat down.

“What’s so funny?”

“You’re just being so serious. It’s funny,” she smirks. “Let’s just make this easier; I’ll eat just about anything, with the exception of certain kinds of fish.”

He smirks, “you can’t not have a preference, or something.”

Athena smirks, “I really don’t.”

“Why not?”

She shrugs, “I guess because my dad was such a hard ass when I was growing up. I tried to the whole being picky thing, and I pretty much got told that if I didn’t eat what was prepared for me that I wouldn’t eat at all. Needless to say, I got over that phase real quick.”

“Damn,” Sidney says quietly, picking a box of Cheerios and Frosted Flakes off of the shelf. “That’s harsh.”

Athena shrugs her shoulders, slowly walking with Sidney down the cereal aisle. “Yeah, I guess. Your parents never did anything like that, did they?”

Rubbing the back of his neck, Sidney shakes his head. “No, not really.”