I’d known Coreline since we were both in high school. We’d then both moved to Austin within months of each other, ran into each other more than we’d found comfortable, and moved back home at the same time, too.
I would’ve thought I’d have known if there were sisters…
The rest of the game went about as it’d started, though, ‘Toddy’ or Enola as Cannel had called her, had become better at avoiding the other little pushy girls by putting on a jolt of speed.
Or just making them look plain unskilled when she dribbled the ball around them as if they were standing still.
By the time they were done, Cannel was packing up her things, and Alison, the other sister that I hadn’t known about, called for her little sister.
“Listen, Rat!” Alison yelled. “Let’s go before you get me in trouble.”
Enola came running over, flipped the girl the bird just like her sister had done on her way out, then said, “Don’t call me Rat.”
“I’ll call you whatever I want,” Alison countered. “Hurry up. Core is probably keeping time.”
I snatched up my chair and followed the girls out at a comfortable distance, leaving my sister to grab her nieces.
When I got to the parking lot just a little farther behind the two girls, I found Coreline standing beside an older model Chevrolet Suburban, watching me come.
“It’s weird to be that close to little girls,” she said the moment I got close enough.
The two girls looked over their shoulders at me as I said, “I was just making sure they weren’t accosted on their return to the parking lot because you can’t control your mouth.”
I visibly saw the steam rising from her head.
I barely kept the smirk to myself.
“Listen, Roll Tide.” She rolled her eyes at my ‘name’ on my shirt. “I can, and will, scream for my sister if I want to. You can kiss my fuckin’ ass if you think that I won’t always put her first. And allow her to know that I think she’s God’s gift to that soccer coach.”
Roll Tide.
That little shit.
I hadn’t heard that in forever.
Though, the hard-on the word caused rolling off her lips was new.
“Oh, hey,” Cannel said sweetly from behind me. “Did you know you guys are neighbors?”
Silence greeted my sister’s sugary sweet words.
Um, I’m sorry, what?
She’d known all along that Coreline was my neighbor. This wasn’t an ‘oh hey, by the way’ thing. This was a ‘let’s see how deep you can dig your own grave’ kind of thing. A little sisterly fuck you, as you might say.
But Cannel didn’t know that Coreline and I had previous history.
By the time Cannel was old enough to comprehend the magnitude in which Coreline and I disliked each other, I’d already been away at college for years.
“Are you now?” Alison batted her eyelashes at me.
Gross. Just what I wanted was the attention of a seventeen-year-old girl.
“Alison,” Coreline growled. “This man is old. My age old. You were just telling me the other day that I was so old I’m crusty.”
I didn’t think that being in your thirties was old, but that was just me.
“I was telling you that because you are. Men don’t age the same way as women do, though.” Alison batted her eyelashes again.
With that, I said, “Well, it’s nice to know that I have the approval of a pubescent teen with an immature brain.”
Alison’s eyebrows shot up to her hairline as if she hadn’t been expecting the jab.
I pulled my keys out of my pocket and headed to my bike but stopped and turned around so that I could see the girls I came to see.
When they watched me come toward them, I held out my fist and said, “Good games, girls. I’ll see you next week if I can swing it.”
The girls laughed their infectious laughs. It was Petra who said, “This was a lively one. They’re not all usually that fun to be at.”
I shrugged. “I have a feeling anything is lively with that one.”
I pointed at the other girl on their team.
‘Toddy’ as Coreline had called her.
“Toddy is a badass,” Petra explained. “Her sister is just as awesome. Toddy is actually one of the Olympic hopefuls. She would be able to be on the team right now if she didn’t live so far away from where they hold practice. Did you know that Toddy’s aunt was a professional bowler?”
A professional bowler?
What?
“What?” I asked in confusion.
I remember Coreline spending a shit ton of time bowling when she was in high school and college, but I hadn’t realized that there’d been anything professional about it.
“Yeah,” Ashlie said, eyes wide. “She can hit a strike almost every single time.”
I looked over at Coreline who was helping Enola/Toddy into the car. “Why do y’all call her Toddy and not Enola?”
“Her middle name is Tondra. Enola Tondra. She doesn’t like going by Enola. So she goes by Toddy. Has since she was a baby, according to Toddy,” Ashlie explained. “Her sister watched her a lot, and being young, she gave Toddy a nickname because she felt like Enola was a mouthful.”