A beautiful morning in the city of Houston with birds chirping, kids rushing to go to school, and most importantly planes landing in the Houston airport.  This is just one singular morning that changes everyone's lives.

Gemma

 Gemma rolls over to see the sun peeking through her curtains, just barely blinding her, all she wants to do is shut eyes tightly and roll back over. The sweet humidity has filled her small one-bedroom apartment, making August in Houston almost unbearable. Gemma stands up groggily and splashes cold water on her face. She needs to be at city hall at 9 am to speak to someone about changing the pollution in water issue that she is writing a story about. She throws on a long flowing skirt that she found at a cute flea market last week and a tightly fitted white tank top. The glass reflects on her belly button piercing, creating a sparkling reflection. She runs down her apartment stairs that are dingy and dark with a light flickering out. She opens the door to extreme humidity like walking in a thick stew. She is off to city hall.

Blaine

BEEP! BEEP! BEEP! 

As the alarm clock goes off, Blaine pulls the sheets over his head to sink back into his sanctuary. The girl he brought home last night from the bar is trying to scurry around to collect her clothes around his bedroom as feeling the effects over a hangover starting to set in. 

“Where is my bra?”

“How the hell should I know... umm what is your name again?” “Oh shut up and just help me find it. I have a 9 am class across campus, never mind I found it asshole.”

Blaine hears his apartment door slam hard with the passion of hatred. He wakes up and walks over to his bathroom sink where he opens his little box and pours out a little scoop and with her credit card lines it up into a perfect line for his morning pick me up. He strips and climbs in his shower to hopefully revive from the night before. As Blaine showers, his nose starts to bleed incessantly and there is a blanket of blood in the bathtub. Blaine grabs one of his new bright white button ups and some blue khaki shorts. Blaine’s phone rings and he looks down to see that it was his mother. Knowing that she is probably calling to complain about the amount of money he spent at the bar last night, he lets it go to voicemail and puts it on speaker. 

“Good Morning Hunny, how did you sleep with all that liquor in your system from last night? You know I get a notification when you spend over $1,000, what did you do to buy the whole fucking bar a drink? You need to grow the fuck up. I am tired of this bullshit. I and your father do not mind supporting you while you are in college but you need to stop spending OUR money like this or I will cut off everything, YOU HEAR ME! Also don’t forget to go to the city hall this morning to grab the papers for your father's expansion, your one little task, so don’t fuck it up.” 

Blaine groans and does another line before he grabs his keys and phone. Then he is off to city hall. 

Jennifer

Jennifer wakes up with her second youngest child nudging her on the side of the bed to wake up because he has to go to school and the new nanny has not shown up. She barely opens her eyes. The hangover sets in from her long wine night with her best friend. Knowing that today is her one day off even though she is on call. She contemplates staying in bed then remembers she still has two children. Jack, her son, is now tugging on her shoulder to get up. Jennifer grabs a bottle of aspirin and washes it down with the bottom of the wine bottle sitting next to her bed. She wraps her lilac-colored robe around her body while pushing her hair into a bun before she has to get the kids ready. As she walks into the kitchen there is milk all spilled over the floor making her have to jump over it.

“Who did this?!”

Her son looked up. “I had to make my cereal, it was too heavy.”

“Oh god Jack, okay it's fine sweetie, how about you go make sure your sister is up and then get ready for school.”

She looks around trying to clean everything up while searching for clues if her husband has left already for work. Since their daughter passed away they could never be on the same page so he sleeps in the basement. Jennifer walks around the corner to find the door to the basement ajar. 

“NICK ARE YOU HERE? HELLOOOO.”

“God stop screaming Jen, yes I am here, I have been on the phone with the office. Do you need something?”

Jennifer descends slowly, wondering how angry he still is about their fight from last night. She doesn't remember it too well - too much wine mixed with too much oxy.

“Hey Nick”

“Hey, are you over your whole act from last night because that is ridiculous? I will just move out if it is going to be like this. Whatever I am done, I am going to work. You need to decide what you want from this marriage, I can’t live like this anymore. By the way, I need you to go to city hall today to get the marriage papers for whatever we decide to do.”

He leaves in a hurry before Jennifer can even answer him. 

As Jennifer drops off her kids at the school it is always a struggle for Maggie to say anything to her mother. Since Sofia passed away Jennifer has never been the same and probably never will be better. As she feels like she is defeated after dropping Maggie off at school her boy Jack goes “Hey Mom I love you”. This little sentence can turn around her whole day. 

“I love you too hunny, have a good day. I will pick you up after school.”

As Jack runs into the school building while his backpack is too heavy on his back which leads him to waddle back and forth.

As Jennifer drives away she is thinking about going to city hall right now. “Is this going to be the end of my marriage if I get these papers. Will he sign them if I get them? I don’t know what to do, UGHHH”.

Jennifer drives to city hall.

At City Hall…

A Freckle-faced middle-aged woman sits behind the desk with her pointy glasses resting at the tip of glass and her aged orangish-brown hair rests right above her shoulder. She announces “How mAy I heLP YoU MA'am?” and Gemma raises her eyebrows, wondering if the receptionist is speaking to her. 

“Hi, I am here to speak to Lindsey Donovan about the water pollution story.” 

“Ah yes you are the tree hugger, I will go get her.” 

“Excuse me?”

“Oh chill out, take a joke!”

Gemma sinks into her seat with the feeling of defeat drowning her whole body. As a voice from the corner comes out “Hey don’t take that from her, she’s a wrinkly old b*tch, excuse my french. I just don’t like when people are rude to gorgeous women.” Blaine studies Gemma, smiling and looking her up and down.

“Well, thank you very much, but it’s okay - I’ll get over it. You know, you look extremely familiar. Do I know you from somewhere?”

“Do you come to the Luna Club? I am there a lot and meet a lot of pretty girls. Have we slept together?” As he subtly laughs. 

“I doubt it,considering I am a lesbian.”

“Oh, sh*t well okay if you ever want to know what it is like to be with a man like me then let me know sweetheart.”

“I doubt I will. But I swear I know you from somewhere. I don’t know where.”

“Well do you, you know? Are you a friend of Devin or Santiago?” As he taps his right nostril

“ Yeah, I would rather not poison my body but thanks.” As Gemma rolls her eyes 

A woman enters city hall and the freckle-faced lady gestures impatiently for her to sit and wait. Jenifer sighs and joins Gemma and Blaine. Her lululemon joggers show off her lean, muscular body, and her hair is pulled up into a high ponytail that you could tell was out of convention instead of style but somehow still looks good. 

Oblivious, Gemma and Blaine continue their conversation about blowing.

As a doctor and as a mom, Jennifer decides she needs to say something.

She chimes in, “Honestly I don’t mean to eavesdrop, but as someone who went to medical school and has had a drug problem ... ‘I need some coke to stay up and do all your homework for your semester and still be able to go to that rager at night’... I get it, but honestly, that sh*t is rewiring your brain.”

Blaine's face is turning hotter and hotter, starting to resemble a tomato. Gemma says “I know we are just strangers to you but we want the best for you. So now you need to decide if you want the best for you”.

Blaine automatically gets defensive. “Well you just don’t understand my dad is on Wall `Street I have to live up to his standards, this is what they do.”

Before the three of them can finish their conversation, a loud slam comes from the main doors, followed by screams and pandemonium, the rushing of families with babies crying and women screeching and gasping. Jennifer sees three men in black walking in with machine guns, grabs Blaine's and Gemma's hands and pulls them up because their backs are facing the men. There is a small hallway with beige paint in this normal-looking building. She yanks them down the hallway before they can even understand what is going on.

“What the f*ck is happening?” Blaine whispers to Jennifer.

“I don’t know, but those men all have machine guns and were heading towards the freckled secretary.”

Gemma, who is not good in emergencies, screeches, “WHAT!”

Jennifer instantly covers her mouth hard pushing her into an empty backroom but now the bad guys must have heard them. All they can hear are bullets hitting walls and police sirens blaring. Machine guns rattling loud, killing everyone. Jennifer shuts the door lightly not to make a sound and starts pacing the room.

“We can’t stay here. We need to keep moving or they will find us, I know there is a stairwell at the end of the intersecting hallway.” Jennifer suggests.

Gemma goes from crying hysterically to collapsing onto the ground, sobbing her eyes out holding her head in her petite hands. Her dainty body collapsing is enough to get Blaine to break as well as trying to keep his manly persona. Jennifer grabs both of their hands, gripping their forearms staring them in the eyes, and gasps. Her eyes staring into theirs just as a mother would do to her child. 

“Do you remember what I said to you two on the plane from San Diego?” Jen asks

As you can see the expression change on their faces comes completely reassured by realizing how they know each other. “Get up and run in exactly two seconds, …. One….t-two” her stutter coming out of being terrified. 

Sprinting down the hallway, leaping with fear. 

Jennifer and Blaine sprinting down the hallway they see Gemma fall on the ground behind them around the bend of the hallway she looks at Jen and Jen is heading back to her when  Gemma’s face goes ghost white as if she has seen a ghost. She turns her head to the other two shaking her head when she realizes that their lives are much more important. Gemma realizes that those kids would be raised without a sister and mother, that family could not handle any more loss. Gem mouths to Jen NO RUN, sacrificing herself.

The two people left to dip into the stairwell and start running up all the stairs. Jennifer needs to break in the middle. “Stop it, think about Jack and Maggie, think about your family. Fight for your family, fight for your life.” Blaine sternly tells Jennifer “You don’t get to give up.”  The next thing they know, they hear the door slam and a rustling of two guys with huge machine guns chasing them up the stairs. “Stop running you little b*tch” calls out the same shooter who ended  Gemma. Jennifer whispers to Blaine, “I went through training for this, there will be a helicopter on the roof, we just have to get there.”

As they yank on the big black cement door to the rooftop, they see more of the bad guys who had already killed the first cop squad. Blaine gasps when he walks onto the roof seeing the police officers with their necks sliced and blood oozing out. There are three masked guys on the roof with all the guns. One man is holding a gun to Jennifer's head ready to shoot a bullet into her brain. Another man speaks “About time you guys made it up here, I am truly proud that you made it this far Blaine. You are lucky you have her with you. You probably would have been too doped up to even run up the stairs.”

“Excuse me, who even are you?”

The man takes off his mask and drops it to the ground. Blaine confused “Clyde? What the f*ck are you doing, you just killed so many innocent people and you don’t even give a f*ck.”

“You know better than that. You know it was not my order. “

Blaine looked confused and disordered. He knows that Clyde works for his father's business and is his personal hitman. Blaine’s head is running through all of these different thoughts ‘ How could his father do this?’ ‘What is the point?’. Then all of a sudden Clyde throws a small silver flip phone at his stomach and Blaine catches it. The burner starts ringing and Clyde gestures for him to answer the phone. Blaine slowly opens the phone, putting it up to his ear then fumbling it when he hears his mom's loving tone come through the phone. “Hello my sweet son Blaine, I hope you liked your little game. I told you it was time for you to step up to take over the family business. Unfortunately, you didn’t listen and we had to make you understand how exactly serious I am.” Blaine hears the loud noise before he registers the bullet plummeting out of Jennifer's head and her body collapsing onto the cold cement.  The voice on the phone sings , “I hope you know now how serious I am about this. Now you better be in your father's office at eight in the morning on Monday. You are taking over the company, we’ll see you soon honey.” And he just hears the phone shut off and go silent. He hurls the phone against the rooftop, letting it shatter into a million pieces. The men start to leave while he tries to wrap his head around what exactly just happened. He walks up to the edge of the roof and truly considers jumping because deep down he knows that his father's company will do much more than just kill him. It will continue to destroy people's lives. He walks away from the edge and walks down to the bottom of the building looking around and seeing the destruction of innocent people and a city building. Walking out of the big gold doors all he sees are cops swarming the entrance of the building, he looks to the left to see Jennifer's husband, Nick, sobbing his eyes out not knowing what happened yet. Blaine walks over to Nick and asks him if he wants to go sit down to talk. That is all he needs to say to get Nick to understand what happened to her. 

“I am truly so sorry for your loss, Jennifer was one of the best women I have ever met. She saved my life there and one time before today. I had originally met Jen on a plane coming back from San Diego when I was in a really rough place - actually,  I wanted to overdose on the plane because my brother had died on a plane and I wanted to do that so I could finally be with him.” I just realized he’s the lucky one.