The Last Firework

At the label showcase, Lily Monroe pointed at the second microphone beside Adrian Vale and asked, "Is this where Mira usually sings with you?"

The room went quiet.

That mic had been mine for seven years.

From dive bars with sticky floors to sold-out theaters, I had stood to Adrian's left for every acoustic closer. I wrote the lyrics, arranged the harmonies, booked the early gigs, and talked club owners into paying us when Adrian was too proud to ask.

Everyone in the band knew that final song was ours.

Adrian had once promised me that when we sold out our first arena, we would sing it together before he announced our engagement.

But Lily only tilted her head and smiled, all nervous charm and pretty innocence.

"Can I try her part?"

Adrian looked at me for half a second.

Then he handed her the spare in-ear monitor.

"Go ahead."

The rehearsal room went silent in the way people go silent when they know they have just watched someone get replaced.

Lily stepped up to my microphone.

Adrian leaned close to adjust the stand for her height, his hand lingering at her waist as he showed her where to come in on the chorus.

The band looked anywhere but at me.

That was the moment I realized Adrian Vale and I were over.

After the showcase ended, Rachel, our tour manager, found me by the loading dock.

The crew was packing amps into flight cases behind her, and someone was still laughing inside the greenroom. Rachel glanced over her shoulder before lowering her voice.

"Mira, you don't need to come in for the acoustic rehearsal on Friday."

I already knew what she was going to say.

Still, my fingers tightened around the strap of my guitar case.

"Adrian wants Lily to sing The Last Firework with him."

The Last Firework.

My song.

The first melody came from my mother. She used to hum it in motel laundry rooms when she worked night shifts and thought I was asleep on a plastic chair beside the dryers. Years later, I turned it into lyrics in the back of our van while Adrian slept through another state line, too tired to notice me crying over the notebook in my lap.

He knew what that song meant.

He had heard the first demo in our kitchen, back when the fridge barely worked and our downstairs neighbor banged on the ceiling every time he sang too loud. He had held my hand after listening to it and said, "When we make it, this is the one we sing together."

Now he was giving it to Lily because she had a soft voice, a pretty face, and the kind of fragile stage presence label executives loved to protect.

I nodded.

"Thanks for telling me."

Rachel looked like she wanted to say more, but the drummer walked past us with a cymbal case, and she only squeezed my arm before leaving.

That night, I sat in my car outside the venue for almost twenty minutes before calling a number I had not touched in years.

Nathaniel Reed answered on the sixth ring, his voice rough with sleep.

"Mira?"

For a second, I said nothing.

Then I looked through the windshield at the neon sign of the club where Adrian and I had once begged to play for free and asked, "You once told me that if I ever stopped confusing loyalty with love, you'd marry me at Royal Albert Hall. Did you mean it?"

There was a pause.

Then a heavy thud came through the phone, followed by a curse.

I blinked. "Did you just fall out of bed?"

"No," he said too quickly.

Despite everything, I laughed.

Nathaniel took a breath. When he spoke again, he sounded fully awake.

"Mira, say that again."

"You can refuse."

"Don't be ridiculous." His voice sharpened. "I meant it then. I mean it now. I'll mean it ten years from now if you call me again."

For the first time all day, the tightness in my chest loosened.

When Adrian came home, I was folding clothes into a suitcase.

He did not notice at first.

He walked in with his shirt half unbuttoned, his hair still damp from the after-party, and the easy exhaustion of a man who expected someone else to clean up after every good night he had.

"Do we have Tylenol?" he asked. "And can you get me some water? Lily tried to keep up with the label people and almost passed out in the car."

I looked at the pale pink lipstick near his collar.

"Adrian," I said, "we're done."

He paused.

Only then did he notice the suitcase.

"Is this about the mic?"

I said nothing.

He rubbed his temple. "Mira, come on. Lily was nervous. It was her first label showcase. I was helping her get comfortable."

"She sang my part."

"She tried a harmony."

"You gave her The Last Firework."

"It was one rehearsal."

"She missed the second verse."

"She has a tone people remember."

"She came in flat on the bridge."

"She has instinct."

I looked at him for a moment. "So that's what you're calling it now?"

His patience thinned at once.

"Don't be petty. I'm trying to keep the band alive."

The way he said the band almost made me laugh.

For seven years, I had written the songs, handled the bookings, fixed the contracts, smoothed over his interviews, and stood beside him on stages so small the monitors barely worked.

But when it was time to give credit, it was his band.

When it was time to sacrifice something, it was always my place.

I closed the suitcase.

"You promised that at the anniversary show, we would announce the engagement."

His face changed.

"Mira, not this again."

"Yes. This again."

"The album is finally getting traction," he said. "The label is watching everything we do. We have festivals, radio, a tour to plan. I can't split my focus because you want a ring."

I stared at him.

He treated his focus like something too precious to waste on me, but somehow there was always room for Lily's nerves, Lily's mic level, Lily's hotel room, her throat spray, her stage fright.

With me, everything became pressure.

"I'm tired," I said. "Announce the engagement, or let me go."

Adrian laughed under his breath.

"Do you hear yourself? Do you know how desperate you sound?"

The word landed exactly where he wanted it to.

After seven years, that was what I had become to him: desperate.

"I told you this isn't the time," he said. "If you want to turn it into some grand tragedy, go ahead. I'm not chasing you every time you pack a bag."

I held his gaze. "So we're done."

"Fine." He threw his shirt onto the chair. "Then we're done."

He went into the bathroom and shut the door.

A moment later, the shower started.

I stood beside the bed for a while, listening to the water run.

On my birthday, he forgot the date unless his assistant reminded him.

When I was sick, he texted, Drink water, and came home after midnight.

When I sent him lyrics, he said they were good, then sang my best line in soundcheck like it had just come to him.

I had forgiven all of it because I remembered the boy who cried in my lap after a record executive told him his voice was ordinary.

But seven years was long enough.

I zipped the suitcase, picked up my coat, and left the keys on the dresser.

By the time Adrian came out of the shower, I was gone.