America had decimated Kemi’s love life.

It had shredded her dignity and tossed its slivers into the air, cackling like a hyena. Relegated to picking up questionable prospects, Kemi was tired of wearing her invisible armor. A two-ton defense system that screamed to the world she didn’t need a man.

She couldn’t carry that weight anymore.

Lately, her dating life read like a dossier of shame. First, there was that one memorable dinner with Deepak. “I think I told you I’m a software developer, right?” Deepak began to overdose on his own voice twenty minutes in. Kemi simply glared at him. She figured his name-dropping his career the sixth time wasn’t worth a verbal response. The rest of the evening, Deepak intermittently punctuated his monologues with his love for “Black booty.”

Then there was the silent date with Earl, a white accountant from Ohio, who summoned visions of a serial killer. Earl kept staring into nothingness past her face. Each time he tried glancing her way, his hawk eyes floated down her cleavage then darted back to the intriguing void beyond her.

She wasn’t sure if he was shy or scheming.

And how could she forget the Jamaican real estate agent, Devan, whose gaze kept trailing every white woman who sauntered past their table while professing unflinching love for the sisters?

America had stretched Kemi’s limits and run her resolve through an involuntary boot camp. According to every dating survey she had ever read, she—a Black African woman—was the least desirable relationship prospect, alongside Asian men.

Those surveys said first choice was someone else.