𝚒 𝚜𝚎𝚎 𝚝𝚑𝚎 𝚕𝚒𝚐𝚑𝚝 || 𝚔𝚊𝚝𝚎 𝚖𝚊𝚛𝚝𝚒𝚗 𝚡 𝚛𝚎𝚊𝚍𝚎𝚛
in which you’re where you’re meant to be
You were sixteen the first time you mentioned it.
Not in some grand declaration or during a life changing moment. You were just two kids slouched in the back row of AP U.S. History, your legs tangled beneath the shared desk, the hum of the ceiling fan louder than the substitute teacher’s monotone lecture about the New Deal. Kate was chewing on the cap of her pen like it might solve all her problems, and you were doing what you always did when the world felt too dull for your imagination, you talked about Disney.
“You know what I’ve always wanted?” you murmured, voice low so no one else could hear. Kate glanced at you sideways, her lips curling into a half smile that already made your chest ache in a way you didn’t know how to name yet. “To be in a field, at night, with someone I love. And there’s, like, thousands of floating lanterns all around us.”
Kate blinked. “Like in Tangled?”
“Exactly.” You grinned. “That scene? With the song? That’s... I don’t know. That’s what love looks like to me.”
She stared at you longer than she should’ve. Long enough that the pen slipped from her mouth. Long enough that you felt heat creep up your neck.
“I’ll take you someday,” she said, softly. Earnestly. “Lanterns and all.”
You laughed. “Yeah, right.”
“I’m serious.”
And the worst part?
You believed her.
It wasn’t until freshman year of college that she said it again.
Not about lanterns. About love.
It was after a brutal home game, the first one you ever attended. You sat in the stands with her parents, feeling your palms go clammy as they kept calling you “her friend” and cheering for Kate like she was already a household name. You wore black and gold. You painted her number on your cheek. And when the final buzzer sounded and her team walked off victorious, you knew exactly where to wait for her.
Kate came out last, sweaty and exhausted and somehow still glowing. When she saw you, her smile hit like the first sunrise after a week of clouds.
You didn’t even get a word out before she dropped her bag and pulled you in.
And kissed you.
It wasn’t perfect. It was quick and breathless and clumsy from all the adrenaline. But it was the first.
Later, in her dorm room, when the lights were off and her voice was barely louder than a whisper, she said it.
“I love you.”
And just like that Tangled scene, something in your chest bloomed open. You didn’t say anything at first. You didn’t have to.
You kissed her again. And again. And again.
You never told her this, but the night of the WNBA Draft was the first time you truly saw her as someone the world would want to take from you.
Because until then, it had always just been you and her. Iowa City was small enough to feel safe, familiar. You could go to the bakery for coffee in the mornings, walk across campus hand in hand after her workouts, and sit curled together on the futon in your shared apartment binge watching Tangled for the third time in a week, humming “I See the Light” like it was your shared language. Her teammates teased her about being the one in a relationship when she never even posted photos. You were her peace. And she was yours.
But that night?
The lights were too bright. The cameras were too close. Her name rang through the venue like a starting gun and the world around you shifted in slow motion.
“The Las Vegas Aces select Kate Martin, University of Iowa.”
Your heart thudded once. Twice.
Because she turned to you first. She always did. Even when her name was called and her dream was unfolding in real time, she looked at you. Found your eyes through the blur of tears and crowd and chaos. And it wasn’t just pride that shimmered in her face, it was that anchor. The silent, aching truth of someone who knew this moment didn’t mean anything if she couldn’t share it with you.
You stood when she did. Wrapped your arms around her waist. Her hand cradled the back of your head like she couldn’t bear to let you go, and your face pressed into her neck just as she whispered, “You’re coming with me, right?”
You nodded. Of course you were.
That night in the hotel room, long after the flashing lights and interviews faded, after her agent finally left and her jersey was folded neatly on the chair across the room, she curled up next to you in bed like a kid again.
Her lashes were still damp from happy tears. The television played some late night post draft coverage, but neither of you were really watching. You just laid there, your legs tangled like they always had been, fingers tracing the hem of her sleep shirt as her breathing steadied.
“I don’t want to do this without you,” she murmured, voice soft in the dark. “It doesn’t feel real unless you’re with me.”
You reached up and brushed a curl from her forehead.
“I’m not going anywhere,” you said.
Kate swallowed. “Promise?”
“I followed you from high school to college, now to Vegas,” you said with a sleepy smile. “I’m not stopping now.”
She laughed, low and soft. “So no pressure or anything, but if I get traded to, like, Alaska…”
You poked her side. “Then I’ll buy a parka.”
Kate turned toward you, eyes searching your face.
“You still want the lanterns?”
That made you blink.
“What?”
“The lanterns. From Tangled. You told me about them once. Said it’s what love looks like.”
The memory hit like warm wind on a cold day.
“I remember.”
“Well,” she whispered, brushing your knuckles with hers beneath the blanket. “You’re what love looks like to me.”
And though she didn’t know it yet, though she didn’t have a ring or a plan or a clue how far she’d go with this, you knew in your bones that she’d already made the decision.
She was going to marry you.
San Francisco felt like a reset.
The moment the plane dipped low enough to see the coastlines carved into the edges of the city, Kate looked out the window like she wasn’t just moving for basketball, like she was chasing a beginning neither of you could name yet.
She had gotten the call from her agent three weeks before. A new franchise. A fresh start. The Golden State Valkyries were calling, and Kate, ever the competitor, answered with a steady yes.
You had watched her take that call from across your shared apartment in Las Vegas, laptop balanced on your knees, editing photos for a local magazine spread you’d been commissioned for. That was your work now, photography. It wasn’t flashy, not always. But it was yours. Your eye. Your angles. Your voice, even in stillness. You told stories with light and shadow. And for the first time in years, you were beginning to feel like you weren’t just following Kate’s dream, but slowly, patiently, building your own.
When Kate hung up, breath caught somewhere between fear and thrill, she turned to you with wide eyes.
“They want me in San Francisco.”
You had smiled, already knowing.
“Let’s go,” you said.
By July 2025, three months into the Valkyries’ inaugural season, your days found rhythm.
Kate had morning lifts and practice blocks. You had editing deadlines, galleries to prepare for, submissions to pitch. You started working freelance for a few Bay Area brands, mostly fashion, sometimes architecture. Your camera bag became your constant companion, always slung over your shoulder or nestled by your feet in coffee shops that smelled like ambition and burnt espresso.
Your evenings belonged to her.
You’d meet back at your loft, sometimes sunburned from rooftop shooting sessions, sometimes grumpy from bad lighting, and she’d wrap her arms around your waist from behind like she didn’t care what kind of day you had, as long as it ended with her.
One night, a Valkyries home game still buzzing in her chest, Kate collapsed beside you on the couch, her hair wet from a rushed postgame shower and her Valks hoodie swallowing her frame.
She looked at you, really looked at you, and said, “I want to do something for you.”
You smiled, sleep-heavy and amused. “You did. You won.”
“No,” she said, softer now. “I mean… something that’s just for you. Something I’ve been thinking about for a while.”
You paused. “Like what?”
But she just kissed your forehead and said, “You’ll see.”
What you didn’t know, what you wouldn’t know until weeks later, was that Kate had already been planning.
She’d Googled lantern festivals within a hundred mile radius. Found one scheduled for late July just outside Sacramento. Rented a car under your name, booked the tickets under hers. She had a jeweler in Berkeley craft a custom ring, nothing flashy, no big diamond, just a perfect braided band with the faintest engraving of a sun and a lantern inside. She’d sneak glances at your fingers when you were brushing your teeth or scrolling through photos, just to double-check the sizing.
Every time you brought up Tangled, she’d pretend to tease you, say you were obsessed, dramatic, childish, but secretly, it only made her more sure.
Because you still lit up when you talked about that scene. You still played that song while cooking dinner or washing your face. You still believed in that kind of magic.
And Kate?
She believed in you.
She picked it up on a Tuesday.
The jeweler handed it over in a small, velvet box the color of twilight. Deep, hushed blue with a faint silver trim that looked like it belonged in a storybook, not a street level storefront in Berkeley. Kate turned it over in her hands like it might vanish. Her palms were sweating. Her mouth was dry.
The ring was perfect.
Not because it sparkled. It didn’t, not in the traditional sense, anyway. It wasn’t made for flash or attention. It was made for meaning.
A delicate band of woven gold, soft as light, and inside, just along the inner curve, two symbols. A sun, etched faint and warm, and a lantern, floating upward.
The first time Kate saw it complete, her breath caught in her throat.
Because that was you. The sun and the lantern. Hope and wonder and home.
She hid it in the back of your shared closet, buried inside a shoebox of old Hawkeye T-shirts you never wore but refused to get rid of. Every morning after practice, she'd crack open the closet just enough to peek at it, to reassure herself it was still there.
She wanted to ask right then. Every single day, she felt like her heart was too full, too loud. But every time she thought she had the right moment, something stopped her.
She’d catch herself watching you while you edited photos at the kitchen counter, hair messy and eyes narrowed in focus, the curve of your mouth twitching when the lighting was finally right, and she’d think, God, I want to ask her now.
Or you'd fall asleep against her chest, movie credits rolling, your body warm and trusting against hers, and she’d whisper, Soon. I promise. Soon.
In the Valkyries locker room, it slipped out one afternoon when practice ran long and the air smelled like sweat and muscle balm.
“My girlfriend’s favorite movie is Tangled,” Kate said to no one in particular, peeling off her compression shirt. “She’s obsessed with that lantern scene.”
Tip looked up. “Honestly? Taste.”
Kate chuckled, rolling her shoulder out. “She told me once it’s what love looks like. That scene. The song, the lights, the moment they see each other clearly.”
Kayla, tying her sneakers a few lockers down, lifted an eyebrow. “That sounds like a proposal setup waiting to happen.”
Kate hesitated, “I got the ring.”
“Wait—what?” Kaitlyn grinned like a shark. “Kate Martin’s getting married before any of us? This league is finished.”
Kate flushed. “I haven’t asked yet.”
“What’s stopping you?” Tip asked gently.
Kate stared down at her knees, quiet. “I don’t want it to feel like a grand gesture just for the sake of it. She’s not like that. I want it to mean something. I want her to feel it.”
“Then make it about her,” Kayla said.
Kate nodded. She already had.
Meanwhile, you knew something was off.
Not in a bad way. Just… a shift. A soft current running under everything lately. Kate had started humming “I See the Light” while brushing her teeth. She Googled weird locations and minimized tabs when you walked into the room. She asked you to text her your ring size, “just for fun,” she claimed, and you raised a brow but played along. She got visibly teary when you showed her a black and white photo series you shot for an engagement announcement in Brides magazine.
And she kept staring at you when she thought you weren’t looking.
You didn’t push.
But something inside you thought, she’s planning something.
You just didn’t know how much.
She told you to wear something nice.
Nothing dramatic, just… nice. A flowing sundress, maybe. Hair down. She didn’t say it outright, but you felt it in the way her eyes lingered on you that morning, her fingers brushing your back like they couldn’t quite let go. There was a reverence in the way she looked at you lately, like you were more myth than girl, and maybe it had always been there, but now it was undeniable.
You’d spent the early afternoon on edge, checking your reflection more times than you cared to admit. It was the softness in her voice that gave you away. The way she kept glancing at her phone, the way she packed snacks like it mattered, the way she set her playlist with intention instead of her usual shuffle.
And now here you were, somewhere between San Francisco and Sacramento, winding along roads brushed with golden light, hills rolling in every direction like the world was exhaling.
Kate had one hand on the wheel, the other resting lightly on your thigh, her thumb tracing lazy circles through the fabric of your dress. She wasn’t talking much. Just humming along to the playlist she made for you two years ago and kept secretly adding to, songs that reminded her of you, of college, of mornings with coffee and movies with tangled hair and slow dancing barefoot in the kitchen.
Your thoughts spun like ribbon on the wind.
This wasn’t the first time she’d taken you somewhere unexpected. There was your twenty first birthday in college, when she blindfolded you and led you to the back parking lot of a friend’s building where she’d set up a screen, a projector, and Tangled playing on loop. There was the time in Vegas when you’d told her you were feeling homesick and she drove you all the way to Utah just to show you the stars.
But this was different.
This was quiet. Intentional. Weighted with something unspoken.
She kept stealing glances at you, like she was memorizing.
And God, was she beautiful. Sun kissed and composed and trying so hard to act casual, but you saw the tension in her jaw, the way her fingers sometimes twitched against your leg.
She was nervous. And Kate didn’t get nervous.
You stared out the window, hills softening into fields, rows of trees casting elongated shadows as the sun dipped lower. Somewhere in the distance, you could see a few people already pulling off into a long dirt drive. You didn’t know where you were going exactly, but it felt right.
And suddenly, a wave of memory crashed through you, your junior year of high school, that day in APUSH when you first told her about the lanterns. You hadn’t thought about it in years, but it came back sharp and clear, the cheap desks, her pen cap in her mouth, the way she said, “I’ll take you someday,” like she already believed in a future the rest of the world hadn’t even dreamed up yet.
She meant it. She always meant it.
You turned toward her just as the car slowed onto gravel, a secluded lot bordered by soft grass and glowing string lights overhead. A small crowd was already gathering near a lake. You spotted small paper lanterns stacked in wooden crates. Fire pits glowing. People milling about with quiet anticipation.
And there it was. The sign, small and hand-painted, nailed to a post at the front of the clearing.
Floating Lantern Festival. One Night Only.
Your breath caught.
Kate parked. Killed the engine. For a long second, neither of you moved. And she reached for your hand.
“Come with me?” she asked, like you hadn’t followed her everywhere already.
You nodded, heart beating like a drum against your ribs. She opened her door.
Her phone buzzed in the cupholder, the next track queued.
The opening guitar of I See the Light.
You froze. She smiled.
And something in your chest whispered, This is it.
The light was golden.
Not just the time of day, though the sun was bowing low, slipping gently behind the horizon, but the feeling of it. Like everything around you had been touched with something quiet and sacred. The field, the still lake, the crowd murmuring softly as they picked up their lanterns. Even the dust that danced in the air looked like it was made of gold.
You stepped out of the car with your heart in your throat. The speaker in Kate’s pocket buzzed faintly, and the music started to hum low, recognizable instantly.
“All those days watching from the windows…”
Your chest ached.
She took your hand again. Not in that casual, familiar way you were used to. This time it was slower. Careful. Her fingers threaded through yours like they were asking permission to stay there.
You didn’t say anything yet. You couldn’t. You just walked.
People drifted past you, heading toward the small dock by the lake’s edge, each couple or family holding a single lantern. Kate paused beside the crate stacked high with them and grabbed one gently, offering it to you with both hands.
“It’s for you,” she said softly. “I already wrote mine.”
You blinked. “We write something?”
Kate nodded. “Just a wish. Or… whatever you want to release.”
You stared down at the lantern. Thin paper, delicate, with a little square at the bottom where a small flame would go. There was a tiny pencil tucked inside the frame.
“I don’t know what to write,” you murmured.
“Write what’s in your chest,” she said. “Not your head.”
You stared at her for a second too long. Her eyes didn’t flinch.
You crouched to scribble something—something simple, private. Your handwriting was a little shaky.
Kate stood quietly, facing the water.
“All those years outside looking in…”
You rose. “Ready?”
She didn’t answer. Not right away. Just reached out and took the lantern from your hands, then set it gently on the table where a volunteer lit the flame.
And together, you walked to the water.
The music got softer as the wind picked up. Your dress tugged against your legs. Her hoodie sleeves fluttered at her wrists. The first few lanterns drifted upward in the distance, slow, warm, rising like stars being born.
Kate held the lantern between you both.
“Okay,” she whispered. “Let go.”
You both released at once.
It rose.
Slow and sure, that tiny glowing thing drifted into the sky like it knew where it belonged. You followed it with your eyes, tears already welling before you even knew why.
Kate turned toward you.
And knelt.
You gasped.
It was small. Barely a sound. Just air catching on memory, on emotion, on knowing.
“Katie,” you breathed.
She held your hand like she was scared you might float away too.
“I’ve been in love with you since I was sixteen,” she said, voice unsteady. “And I knew, I knew, the first time you told me about the lanterns that I’d spend the rest of my life trying to give you one.”
Tears blurred your vision.
“You’ve followed me everywhere. You’ve held me together when I didn’t even know I was falling apart. And I know I’ve never been the best with words, but I’ve never been more sure of anything than this—”
She opened the small velvet box. The ring shimmered like dusk.
“I see the light,” she whispered. “And it’s you.”
You let out a sound halfway between a sob and a laugh.
“Jesus Christ, Katie—”
“Marry me.”
You dropped to your knees, pulled her in, and kissed her so hard she nearly lost her balance in the grass.
“Yes,” you whispered against her mouth. “Yes, of course.”
Around you, the sky bloomed with gold and flame. Lanterns filled the air like stars on rewind, lifting and floating into the dark, and somewhere in the background, the last note of the song trailed off into silence.
But Kate’s voice was still in your ear.
“I’ll give you a thousand lanterns,” she whispered. “Whatever it takes.”
And in that moment, you believed her.
Because of course she would.
She always meant it.
