After their mother dies and their father leaves them, teenage brothers Tex and Mason McCormick struggle to make it on their own.

Donna and Michael are getting married. But first, they have to plan the reception, get the tux, buy the rings, and cope with their own uncertainty about the decision. Michael fears commitment. Donna has her doubts about Michael's immaturity. Both are getting cold feet.

After being thrown away from home, pregnant high school dropout Maria meets Matthew, a highly educated and extremely moody electronics repairman. The two begin an unusual romance built on their sense of mutual admiration and trust.

The police have three bookies under surveillance, but they escape and set up shop elsewhere. By chance, one of the police finds them; instead of turning them in, he demands money that his brother, now a suicide, had lost to them

This film tells two interwoven stories of two single-parent families in a poor, racially-mixed neighborhood in Brooklyn. The first story is about a young black man (with aspirations of getting away from his friends who are involved in drugs) who falls in love with a latino girl (who is heading off to college on a full scholarship). The second is about their parents, (she works in the neighborhood liquor store; he works for the phone company). The story takes place against the backdrop of a winning lottery ticket worth $27 million being sold to someone in the neighborhood from the liquor store.