A Fragile Love

Chapter One

Kiana always thought she was blessed to have a normal life. Her parents were still together. She had a big brother who was a senior in college that tended to get a little overprotective, but they had a great relationship. She was close with all his friends since her freshman year. She had two best friends of her own that she adored. She was a junior this year and she and her friends had finally transferred in an upper-class, co-ed dorm. The same dorm her brother and his friends lived.

Yes, life was perfect except for one little thing. While everyone seemed to love her, her body hated her. She'd been diagnosed with an autoimmune disease, Lupus, her freshman year. It had scared the crap out of her family. Everyone in her family seemed to be perfectly healthy except her, she had taken on the same health issues that her grandmother had. A grandmother she had never met. She'd passed away when Kiana's mother was only five of the same disease which was why her family and friends were so overly protective of her. Life could be so unfair. She'd gone through denial, then fear, and finally she just learned to live with her illness.

There was nothing she could do about it and she tried to enjoy life as much as possible around the symptoms. Sometimes she was perfectly fine and other times she was extremely sick, and then there were those annoying instances that one or two symptoms would hit her when she least expected causing her to faint or worse have a seizure. Ugh! Soo embarrassing! Especially when it happened in public which was why she was the most overprotected girl on campus by her brother and all his friends and her two best friends. If only they didn't know about it, they'd stop treating her like some fragile walking flower that was suddenly going to wither and die, but she dealt with their responses to her sickness just as much as she dealt with the sickness itself. She knew they cared, and she felt their love, and was grateful for having so many wonderful people in her life.

They were just so damn annoying!!

She had turned 21 a month ago. Her family and friends had gone out of their way throwing her an extravagant birthday party. She hadn't wanted to be the center of attention and yet the entire town seemed to be happy to celebrate her birthday. She was happy, truly happy, and yet...she wasn't allowed to drink alcohol and they still treated her like a child. She was still a damn virgin.

It wasn't that she was ugly. Apparently, all the guys thought she was beautiful from the constant whispers she heard from them passing by and the few brave ones that dared to flirt with her. As a black girl on campus, she tended to attract all races, not just black men. She often wondered if it was because of her light skin, her long, straight, black hair and her slim, petite figure or perhaps it was her hazel eyes she had inherited from her parents that attracted the white guys and the Asian guys. A few black guys, the nerdy and conservative type, tried to ask her out, but she never caught the interest of "normal" black guys. She had no booty, no hips, no curves, not like the other black girls that she envied. Her sickness was the reason why her body refused to gain weight in the right places.

And yet, it was her...what did one of the twins that constantly hung out with her brother say? Oh yes, it was her delicate, fragile, beauty that drew men to her and made them want to write poetry and lock her behind a glass cage and protect her forever.

Idiots.

It was because of them, along with her overprotected brother and the rest of his friends that she was still single. They chased away anyone they didn't approve of which was every single male on campus.

Well, things were going to be different this year. This was her junior year and they were not about ruin her life. She was grown, a complete adult now. She was of legal age to do whatever she wanted.

The more she thought about it, the angrier she became as she walked the campus on her way back to the dorm. The last of her classes for the day had ended. It was only 4:00pm, but students were already hanging outside enjoying the Quad. The Quad was a big square space in the middle of the campus surrounded by academic buildings that the students used as their playground to do whatever they wanted.