you?”
Roni let out a breath so deep the whoosh of it was audible from where John stood. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
John gave a brief nod and left. As he drove toward the church, he shifted in the seat of his truck, repositioned his hands on the steering wheel, ran a finger inside his collar, but the uneasiness he felt didn’t come from anything physical. It might not be a bad idea to drop in on Roni tonight. Or give her a call and ask to talk to Luke. Just to check and make sure everything was okay.
He also thought about calling his lawyer, finding out what it would take to get sole custody. For information, he told himself. He wasn’t sure he was ready to go there. Yet. Maybe he was overly suspicious. Or maybe he needed to pay closer attention to his instincts.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Faith paused in the doorway of the library’s meeting room, her insides twitching as if someone had attached an electrode to them and was flipping the switch on and off a million times a minute. Shy with new people and in new situations, she was sure the only person she’d know was Rok. She could manage when she was joining someone she knew, like Lorna at the gamer group, or could put on her professional personality to interview a new client or make a presentation. But even then she had a smidgen of self-doubt. Today she had more than a smidgen.
Three tables were planted like rows of corn in the center of the room, facing a screen that had been pulled down from a cylinder mounted on the ceiling. A half-dozen teenaged boys, younger versions of the geeks in the gaming group, clustered at the center of the first table, whispering and punching one another in the arm as they pointed to things on their laptop screens and laughed at secret jokes.
In the second row, a little to the right of center, an elderly couple huddled together over a shared laptop. A young girl, wide-eyed and innocent, sat midway between the end of that table and the couple. The girl stared at Rok’s back with something resembling hero worship as he leaned over a desk.
Faith felt like a grandma. Other than the seniors, she was the oldest person in the room. Even Rok wasn’t that much older than the other males, perhaps twenty or twenty-one. His intensity as he fiddled with the projector hooked up to his computer lent him a maturity the younger boys lacked.
Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to come to this class after all. She was tempted to turn around and leave.
Rok got the first slide of his PowerPoint presentation up on the screen, then turned to survey his class. He smiled when he saw Faith, and a huge part of her uncertainty evaporated like rain on a Tucson sidewalk. She returned his smile and proceeded to claim the center location in the third row of tables. One hurdle passed.
“Good morning,” Rok said. The conversations hushed as all eyes focused on him. “This is going to be a four week introduction to game programming. I’ll spend the first hour each week showing you the tools and concepts of a gaming system, we’ll take a short break, then during the second hour you can install the software, play with it, and ask any questions you might have. Between classes, you’ll work on a game of your own using the techniques we cover in class.”
He pulled a plastic bag out of his computer case and passed it to the first boy. “Please take one and pass the bag on.” When it got to Faith , she saw the bag contained silver plastic flash drives with “Games That Rok” printed in black letters on the side. Clever.
“The flash drive contains all the software you’ll need for this class, plus example code,” Rok said.
One of the boys turned the drive over and over, as if examining all sides for some kind of clue. A couple of the others plugged the drive into the USB port on their computers. Faith held back. Although her MacBook was fairly secure, she was ever suspicious of loading strange software onto it. After all, her computer was her
Roni let out a breath so deep the whoosh of it was audible from where John stood. “I’ll see you tomorrow, then.”
John gave a brief nod and left. As he drove toward the church, he shifted in the seat of his truck, repositioned his hands on the steering wheel, ran a finger inside his collar, but the uneasiness he felt didn’t come from anything physical. It might not be a bad idea to drop in on Roni tonight. Or give her a call and ask to talk to Luke. Just to check and make sure everything was okay.
He also thought about calling his lawyer, finding out what it would take to get sole custody. For information, he told himself. He wasn’t sure he was ready to go there. Yet. Maybe he was overly suspicious. Or maybe he needed to pay closer attention to his instincts.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Faith paused in the doorway of the library’s meeting room, her insides twitching as if someone had attached an electrode to them and was flipping the switch on and off a million times a minute. Shy with new people and in new situations, she was sure the only person she’d know was Rok. She could manage when she was joining someone she knew, like Lorna at the gamer group, or could put on her professional personality to interview a new client or make a presentation. But even then she had a smidgen of self-doubt. Today she had more than a smidgen.
Three tables were planted like rows of corn in the center of the room, facing a screen that had been pulled down from a cylinder mounted on the ceiling. A half-dozen teenaged boys, younger versions of the geeks in the gaming group, clustered at the center of the first table, whispering and punching one another in the arm as they pointed to things on their laptop screens and laughed at secret jokes.
In the second row, a little to the right of center, an elderly couple huddled together over a shared laptop. A young girl, wide-eyed and innocent, sat midway between the end of that table and the couple. The girl stared at Rok’s back with something resembling hero worship as he leaned over a desk.
Faith felt like a grandma. Other than the seniors, she was the oldest person in the room. Even Rok wasn’t that much older than the other males, perhaps twenty or twenty-one. His intensity as he fiddled with the projector hooked up to his computer lent him a maturity the younger boys lacked.
Maybe it hadn’t been such a good idea to come to this class after all. She was tempted to turn around and leave.
Rok got the first slide of his PowerPoint presentation up on the screen, then turned to survey his class. He smiled when he saw Faith, and a huge part of her uncertainty evaporated like rain on a Tucson sidewalk. She returned his smile and proceeded to claim the center location in the third row of tables. One hurdle passed.
“Good morning,” Rok said. The conversations hushed as all eyes focused on him. “This is going to be a four week introduction to game programming. I’ll spend the first hour each week showing you the tools and concepts of a gaming system, we’ll take a short break, then during the second hour you can install the software, play with it, and ask any questions you might have. Between classes, you’ll work on a game of your own using the techniques we cover in class.”
He pulled a plastic bag out of his computer case and passed it to the first boy. “Please take one and pass the bag on.” When it got to Faith , she saw the bag contained silver plastic flash drives with “Games That Rok” printed in black letters on the side. Clever.
“The flash drive contains all the software you’ll need for this class, plus example code,” Rok said.
One of the boys turned the drive over and over, as if examining all sides for some kind of clue. A couple of the others plugged the drive into the USB port on their computers. Faith held back. Although her MacBook was fairly secure, she was ever suspicious of loading strange software onto it. After all, her computer was her
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