Falling for my Stepbrothers

PART ONE Chapter one ALEX My name is Alex, short for Alexandra Manning, no relation to the NFL Football legends, unfortunately. I live with my mom and dad, David and Carol Manning, in an above-average modest home with a huge backyard that I could play in all day growing up. I think I look like my dad, but everyone always tells me I'm wrong, I'm the spitting image of my mom, with long wavy chestnut hair, and beautiful hazel-green, almond-shaped eyes. I'm told I will be beautiful one day like my mom. Am I not beautiful now? Aberdeen is the town we live in. It's a small town about half an hour northeast of Baltimore. Aberdeen is a typical town. It also houses an Army base, Aberdeen Proving Ground, within its town lines as well. The most exciting thing about my town is the fact that Cal Ripken Sr., the former manager of the Baltimore Orioles, and his family are from here. Honestly, if you aren't a baseball fan, you may not even know who that is. But it's home to me, it's a nice little fun fact about my town, that I can default back to relatively quickly. Disappearing outside or at my friend's house was a constant thing for me. It's not fun being at home listening to my parents fighting all the time. When I was ten, my dad died, leaving my mom and me alone. When that happened, mom, unfortunately, believed our house to be more house than we needed. Therefore, we had to move. Keep in mind, this new start in a new home was not voted on by me. The woman came home one day, announcing we were moving. I didn't get a say in the matter. Please understand my mother, she's a fly-by-the-seat-of-your-pants, co-dependent, eccentric, overly romantic woman. We also just didn't move across town, the woman took us over eight hundred miles away to central Florida. We struggled for a long time, even before my dad died, not financially or anything. Mom's parents left her a bunch of money when they died that she's never even touched, it's just sitting in a trust collecting interest all these years. Our struggle was more emotional. My parents fought all the time, even before the accident that claimed his life. This was a marriage that probably never should have taken place. But they were young and trying to do the right thing by me. After all, I didn't ask to be born, did I? As much as I loved my parents, I knew they probably shouldn't have remained together as long as they have, and I prepared myself for the dreaded divorce talk I knew was coming soon. What we didn't expect, or count on, was a police officer showing up at our house, in the middle of the night, telling us dad was killed, with his girlfriend, when he lost control of his car in a rainstorm, and drove off the Susquehanna Dam bridge. Growing up in such a small town, it didn't take long for most of the town to hear about what happened. The affair was heavy enough news in itself for a while, but then it was followed by the accident. I don't know how he could have done that to us, to mom. What happened after that, happened quickly. I quickly began spiraling out of control. I didn't have a clue how to stop the walls from closing in on me. All I could think of doing was find a safe place within myself, where I knew I'd be safe, and that's what I did. I couldn't even guess the twists and turns my life was about to take. But all of that is the reason why mom chose to sell my childhood home, escaping the small town, and the shallow minds that reside there. As for my mom, after her dad died, she continued the traveling they used to do before their marriage went bad. After a brief period of mourning, she resumed traveling the world and living her best life. I, on the other hand, developed security and abandonment issues. I worried all the time about people leaving me. That led to me beginning to search online for polygamous relationships. We are weird, I know. What I'm considering is a very unconventional way of life, but I knew, even as a young child, I knew what I wanted and desired in life. This has been my thinking since dad had an affair and died, leaving us in limbo. Now with mom in the state that she is in, I'm left to figure everything out myself. I don't exactly have the perfect road map to guide me, I'm honestly just trying to figure s**t out as I go.***