In which we finally answer the question, “Does Roaree have an evil twin?”

PART III: LOVE ACROSS STATE LINES

POV: Millie the Dancing Bear

I’ve fallen in love, but it’s not my fault.

Roaree had been beyond distant lately. He wasn’t even willing to cross Broadway to have dinner with me in Hewitt anymore. I know he’s alive because he’s been reposted on Columbia’s Instagram twice in the past week (both black-and-white selfies captioned with Bob Dylan lyrics). I was bold, beautiful, ballistic. Even though I was over him, I felt like I had to confront him to preserve my dignity because I am a feminist, after all. 

I went on the Columbia Athletics website and saw that the next football game was Columbia versus Princeton. Perfect. Columbia would lose, probably because Roaree would be too busy realizing that he had put his jersey on backwards and let some Princeton player saunter right into the endzone. Roaree would be in a terrible mood. I would confront him after the loss. This was war.

I painted Pantone-292 stripes beneath my eyes, slashed the bottom half of a Columbia t-shirt off, and brought some snacks for the long subway ride up to the stadium. 

As expected, Columbia was terrible, and Roaree’s jersey was both backwards and inside-out. He wasn’t even wearing a helmet, probably because he didn’t want to mess up his mane. This only fed my rage— who was he trying to impress?

During halftime, I went to the concession stand to see if they had any plant-based nachos (I had to be fueled for my confrontation). While I didn’t find any vegan hot cheese, I found something so much better—The Tiger (that’s his name). We caught each other’s eyes as I was heading back to my seat and he was leaving the locker room. His gaze was hungry but respectful, and that was pretty sexy of him. After Princeton won and the game ended, he found me waiting outside and we started talking. He asked me how I was (also pretty sexy of him), and I asked him how he managed to play football while wearing Sperry’s boat shoes. That led to a conversation about our childhoods, because turns out that The Tiger had worn boat shoes since before he had learned to walk. It was a long, beautiful, bold conversation, and at the end, he gave me his number and told me to call him by his first name, The.

Since that moment, I’ve been going down to Princeton to visit The every weekend. That’s how I know I’m in love, because I’m going to New Jersey for him! I love how clean-cut he is, with his stripes peeking out from his polo. He’s pretty wild in bed, too, and, best of all, he talks to me, which Roaree never did. Even if he doesn’t stop going on about his yacht entering the harbor during sex, it’s still talking. I love how he makes me forget about Roaree, but he’s more than just another big cat to me.

Sometimes, though, I catch myself remembering Roaree when I’m with The. Lions and tigers and bears, oh my… 

POV: Roaree the Lion

It’s been forty days and forty nights since I last saw Millie. For a while, we weren’t really talking, but we’d still hook up on the weekends when we ran into each other at parties. These days, though, I never see her out on the weekends. It’s almost like she’s not even on campus anymore.

I spend my days writing acrostic poems and weeping, but my vocabulary is actually not as good as I make it out to be in discussion posts and I’m running out of adjectives to fill out the letters M-I-L-L-I-E. I’m lying in bed, curtains drawn, about to check my stocks for the fifth time this hour, when I get a text. Millie. My heart skips a beat.

hey can we grab dinner tonight

I can’t even pretend to play it cool. I immediately respond with a resounding yes, and I cycle through the potential restaurant options for our romantic reunion. Fumo, Le Monde, Roti Roll… Hewitt. Perfect. It’s a date.

I’m so nervous that I have to eat at JJ’s right beforehand to calm myself down. I drop a tray of wings down my white shirt, but I don’t have time to change. I regret this instantly when I see her under the Hewitt lights. She’s glowing. O Millie, my Barnard babe, my ursine love!

We have small talk, and things are a little tense. She’s not really eating, and she honestly looks a little disgusted by me when I take an entire pizza back to the table. It’s okay, though; we’ll fall back into the rhythm of our love soon enough.

“Roaree, I wanted to tell you something.”

Here it is. My heart is racing and I can’t tell if it’s from the pounds of cheese I’ve consumed in the last thirty minutes. She loves me and I’ll say it back and we’ll be together forever/until grad school.

“I’m pregnant.”

The Tiger X Millie via Bwog Archives