The Reluctant Bride

Part 1: Men

A/N: Guess who is writing another Shibby story? This guy ;)

He got down on one knee.

"Siobhan, will you do me the honor of being my wife" You would probably think that this would be a cause for celebration, it was not, at least not for Siobhan. Her and Roger had been together for only a year now, not even a year, 11 months. She was absolutely frustrated at his timing, who does that. In reality it wasn't that crazy, he was getting old and as he kept reminding her she was not getting any younger. She couldn't say no but the word comes out differently.

"Yes, I'll marry you" The feeling in her stomach should be excitement but it wasn't, it was fear.

Roger was a good man, or at least that is what people keep telling her. In reality she didn't really know if that was true. Siobhan hadn't been around a lot of 'good men' in her life. There had been her father that beat the shit out of her mother every other day as he came home drunk. He worked as a truck driver so sometimes they could go days without him, it was nice. She thinks that her fathers cruelness trickled down through her mother. She never hit her or anything but she was cruel. For as long as Siobhan could remember her mother had made remarks about her body, measuring and weighing her daily, there were strict food restrictions which meant that she often went to bed hungry. When Siobhan got home late her mother would lock her out and she would sleep in the garden or in the shed if it was raining. The shed was gross so it was a last resort. Her father was a hunter and the shed stunk of death. All this to say that childhood wasn't easy and the first man in her life wasn't a good one.

Her first boyfriend could have been a good man. She didn't have a boyfriend until 16, it wasn't a choice her mother wouldn't allow. That was until the son of the richest man in town knocked on their door and asked to take Siobhan out. They had never really interacted and had circumstances been different she wouldn't have gone, but her mother loved the idea, she liked keeping up appearances even though they were poor. Not dirt poor but there was nothing to put away and every piece of furniture or clothes in the house had had at least one previous owner. This fact was something widely known in school and lets just say that in your teens this is not the image of your family you want.

Ironically enough the rich man's son was called Rich, or Richard but no one ever called him that. He was a rich man's son, called Rich, who would grow up to be a very rich man. There is something deeply funny in this way of putting it, at least that's what Siobhan thought. Rich was a little bit weird looking, pale and large eyes, scary large eyes like some kind of bug. He was popular, but mostly because he could pay for his friends to do anything. There were trips to different ski resorts every Christmas and multiple lake houses for the summer time. This sounds great, but Siobhan knew that something was off about him. He had a way of talking to people that made her uneasy, like he never saw anyone as an equal and liked to make fun of people, even his friends. Siobhan didn't have friends, but she was pretty sure that this was not the way to treat them, or any person really.

Their first date was good, above her expectations. She had imagen that he would make a spectacle out of it but he didn't. He took her to her beach promenade and got her ice cream. He told her that all he really wanted was to get to know her, that he thought that she was beautiful and interesting. No one had ever called her beautiful before, she hadn't felt beautiful before but after this night just a little bit of confidence in her appearance would spark. A messed up part of her thought that maybe her mother had been right in being hard on her, on starving her, because now she was beautiful. This was not true, had she had any friends or even just a nice neighbor they would have told her that her body wasn't supposed to hurt when she lied down because her bones stuck out in an unnatural way, they would have told her that she was more than her body. But no one did so she didn't know that she had a pretty smile and really intense gray eyes that could hypnotize a person. She wouldn't know about the damage starvation has on your body until she was older.

To her mothers delight her and Rich became a couple and things were good, things were really good to begin with. She spent a lot of time at his place which meant not seeing her mother get beaten and not being left without dinner. They had been together for about three months when he changed. He was starting to be mean, the way he was towards his friends. She really should have seen this coming but she didn't. He started to pressure her for sex and it scared her. It scared her a lot. She had slept over in the past but he just kissed her and held her, now his hands wandered and she knew that it was just a question of time. She had a talk with herself, she decided that she didn't want this, that she was going to leave. So she didn't go over. That night her dad was home and there was another delightful session of domestic abuse. It was worse than ever. She packed some clothes and went to Rich's house, sex couldn't be worse than this, right?

Rich was a virgin and he lied about that fact. He had learnt what he knew about sex from porn and lets just say that his search history would disturb some people, he didn't like women. He wanted to have sex with women, he wanted to control women, at times hurt women, but he did not like women. Seeing how Siobhan also lacked any sexual experience she assumed that this might just be what women would put up with. He wanted to humiliate her, to make her feel like she wasn't good for anything else and at 16 it is so easy to do. This went on for about 7 months before he lost interest. She stopped fighting back, she stopped showing fear or pain and he didn't like that. He dumped her and it was the best day of her life so far. She had to spend more time at home but she was almost 17, at 18 she would leave home. She was going to survive, she was going to be fine.

The next man in her life was different. They were not in a relationship, they were friends, she had finally made a friend. She had actually made a number of friends, but he was by far the best. Unfortunately she would be disappointed in him as well. He was a ladies man, this didn't bother her at all, she didn't like sex and just assumed that this meant that she didn't want romance or anything but a platonic relationship ever. His name was Nathaniel and he treated her like one of the boys, she liked that. The way he talked about women however did disturb her, he would tell her these really explicit stories about the women he had sex with. He would laugh about how easy they were, he called them horrible things. Siobhan wanted to ask him how their choices were any different from his own, but she didn't, she still wanted him to like her even if she realized that she might not like him. He wasn't very nice and the person she thought would be the expedition to the rule she had learnt in her youth about men and women would not be disproved. They did not stay friends, she moved and they drifted apart somewhat naturally.

Men keep disappointing her but she learned something new every time and she could use that. Men didn't like women who were easy, you had to put up a fight, sometimes physically and sometimes just mentally. You had to be pretty but act like you didn't know it. You should be available for sex at any moment but you should not show any interest in sex when a man did not initiate it. She made rules for herself about how to act around men. She still didn't like sex but she liked getting what she wanted, she liked getting taken care of. So when Siobhan had slept her way to the middle she met Roger, he was better than any man she had been with, not as a person but in what he could provide for her. He was older than her father, not much but still... She made herself what he wanted, it wasn't hard. He would of course go on to disappoint her as well but at least she had a nice life now, a really nice life.