Ice Cold

40

Wren Ridley

Ever since Landon showed up in my dorm room on Sunday night, the two of us didn't spend a night apart. Whether we were sleeping at his dorm or mine, we were always together. I even drove him to therapy on Wednesday afternoon after a slight argument about it. He didn't want me acting as his chauffeur, but it was no bother to me. I drove him to practice afterward, kissing him lightly as he got out of my car.

"Have fun at practice my angel," I said as he grabbed his bag from the back seat.

Landon scoffed, but I could see the blush rising on his cheeks. He acted like he hated terms of endearment, but I had been trying different ones to see what stuck and he blushed every time. He wanted to hate it, but he secretly liked it.

"That's almost as bad as the last one," he said, standing outside the car and talking to me through the open window.

"I thought you liked pookie?"

"Absolutely not."

He absolutely did. I would have to start using that one more often.

Landon shook his head at me and made his way toward the practice facility. Once he was inside, I could move onto my plans for the afternoon.

Jess had been kind enough to give me some insight on this Cooper guy. Apparently, he lived in the same building as Jess, next to Landon's building, and lived with one of the other guys on the hockey team. According to Jess, Cooper and his roommate never locked their door. They were both too stupid to remember their keys, so they just always left it unlocked.

Also, according to Jess, Cooper still had to attend the team practices even though the coach wasn't allowing him on the ice. So, at this time, the room was empty.

I had debated in my head what I was going to do about this Cooper situation. My first instinct was to slash his tires, but that would have been too difficult. It wasn't like I could just slash someone's tires in broad daylight, and my nights were spent with Landon. I wasn't going to leave Landon one night so I could go seek revenge on this guy, so the logical thing was to do it when I was going to be away from Landon anyway, and when I was guaranteed not to get interrupted.

This time of day, it was quite busy on campus. People were going in and out of the dorms constantly, so it wasn't hard to get inside the dorm. Even if it was difficult to get in, Jess could have come to open the door for me.

I parked my car in a far spot in the lot, grabbed my bag, then snuck in the dorm past someone who was entering and made my way to the stairwell. Jess had told me Cooper's room was on the third floor, the last door on the left.

Luckily when I got to the third floor, the hallway was empty. I hurried down the hall, light on my feet, and made my way to the last door on the left. Sure enough, the door was unlocked.

I opened the door slowly, poking my head in to ensure no one was in the room before I entered.

The room was a mess, and I wasn't even exaggerating. There were clothes all over the floor, open bags of chips on the beds, trash around the trash can from these guys trying to throw it in and missing. It smelled foul like they hadn't done their laundry all semester.

I didn't even want to set my bag down anywhere, fearing the mess and stink would follow me out of here. But I had to do what I set out to because I couldn't just let what Landon had told me slide. The poor roommate would be collateral damage, but I couldn't find it in me to care.

I set my bag down and got to work.

First, I approached the desk on the left side of the room that had a laptop sitting on top of it and opened it. The screen lit up and John Cooper's name greeted me. Now that I knew which side of the room was his, I got started.