"What happened," he asks himself as his teenage son gets phone call after phone call from people he doesn't know and his son won't tell him about. He asks out of fear for his son, and love, for he has heard about what young people get into these days and can hardly forget what he got himself into so many years ago.
He is afraid his son doesn't love him and never will.
He gets up to leave, earlier than he needs to, and calls him "bud" as he awkwardly hugs him from the side. His mother will be along shortly, and he's not interested in seeing her.
The son retrieves his laptop - he always gets what he wants - and reminds himself that no matter what he or the other man feels, he is the one who decides who he is, no one else, and he is the island he desperately needs to be, amidst a sea of other islands; strong, independent, scared. He isn't sure what it means to be grown up, to really love, because it seems like the whole world doesn't have a clue either. The woman on the screen reaches out with everything that she is, wishing he was strong, willing to give him everything so he'll love her.
And God sees the man who hasn't grown up and the son who wishes he had and the woman who is beautiful and both so lonely and the mother who spends weekdays and nights with the boy so powerless to help him become something she isn't even sure exists. And the church across the street is empty, but none of them know or care, just like none of them know or care that God sees, and burns.
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