Another one before the ice melts. One more. For kicks, for giggles, for shits. One last one. Just one. One more wave, another beer, a lap around the track. One last ball game, one last laugh. The ice is melting, it is rising, slowly in with the tide and out and in a little further, inching towards the shore, towards us. So I’ll have another one — before the ice melts. Before it’s gone. Before this is all gone. Everything is gone. What’s one more night, one more mountain, one more show, one more dance? One more time, to celebrate. One last time to go up and back again, what’s one more mile, one more round. Let’s go again, god damn it.

Blended or on the rocks? The rocks. If no one else wants to go, I’ll go again. This time faster, harder, quicker, before the ice melts. Before we get washed away.

They lived by this, breathed by this. It’s how they met, they were young, fell fast for each other and hard. Went through jobs together, houses, roommates, a try at a marriage, try at a baby.

Thinking there would be ice in their glass forever. The day would never come where their tongues would be stained by that watered down taste from a drink left unattended.

But the ice was down to a sliver now. It had melted; time ran out — tongues stained.

So the two of them, what was left, drove one morning up to the mountain top one last time, the mountain they went to their first time. This time in their electric powered car, no steady hum of the engine that his old stale tobacco-stenched truck used to make as it chugged up the hill and that’s all they’d listen to since his stereo had given out.

At the top, they kissed one last time. Drove down to the beach where he swam and she took a nap in the sand. After, they went to the bar — their bar, one last time, “for old times sake” they said.

Then they came home and made love, one last time. After, they sipped whiskey and laid on the couch naked, gazing into the fire, like they did the first night. Listening to music and the natural silence between them. She’d kiss his shoulder, he’d squeeze her tight. His arms, a blanket around her. Both feeling a warm sort of comfort, familiar to each; a memory.

Rattling his glass he got up and started into the kitchen running his fingers down her arm then up and off her shoulder as he walked by, “Get you something?” he asked.

“Yeah, let me have another one, before the ice melts.”