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"Marguerite! You're going to be late!"

She rolled over and contemplated being "sick" for the day. Which wasn't too hard to contemplate, considering how she was feeling lately. Between the mood swings, fatigue, nausea and all around suck-itude of life in general, spending the day in bed being "sick" was sounding really fucking good.

Being pregnant sucked ass.

But she had a paper due, a paper that her professor had insisted be handwritten, to discourage the "copy-and-paste" method of writing favored by some of her classmates. So she sighed and sat up.

Her room looked out onto 150th Street, showing a lovely, tree-lined New York City thoroughfare on what appeared to be another gorgeous fall day. The pretty view did nothing to improve her mood.

"Coming, Granny!" she called down the hall.

She shook her head at herself as she glanced in the mirror, and her reflection shook her head back at her. Red hair, curly to the point of springiness, bounced in a halo all over her head. Blue eyes, bleary from lack of sleep, stared back at her. Taken as a whole, she didn't really look like a "Marguerite"; in fact, if there were anyone, anywhere on the planet who looked less like a "Marguerite", she'd like to see her.

"You look like shit," she said to her reflection. She winced as she pulled her bra on; as if it weren't tight enough, her boobs were already getting bigger at an alarming rate. Why? It's not as if there were even a baby yet to nurse from them or whatever.

She turned sideways, but her trim stomach was just as flat as it had been yesterday. By her best calculations, she was barely seven weeks, yet for some reason, her breasts had exploded already. WTAF?

She sighed, considered attempting to tame her unruly hair, decided she probably wasn't going to run into Justin Trudeau on her way to school, and just flapped a hand at her twin in the mirror and headed toward the kitchen.

*****************

"Dude!"

Pietro turned, smiling the easy smile he was known for. He stopped and waited for Evan to catch up to him, watching the compact blond boy who had hailed him approach. Evan was just as glad to see Pietro, and grinned at his much taller friend.

"You look especially dapper today, man, you meeting someone after class?" Evan clapped a hand on Pietro's shoulder as he spoke.

"Dapper? I don't know that word," he confessed, raising his eyebrows and blinking green eyes owlishly. The two walked across the open expanse of Columbia University toward their first class. "I'm just a provincial exchange student from the countryside of Italy, such words are beyond me.

"I do know, though, that we're late, Evan, so move those short legs faster, eh?" He slung an arm around his friend as the two hurried toward their 10:30 class.

"You figure out where you're going to live?" Evan asked.

Pietro knitted his brows together, turning serious. "It's too early in the morning to talk about this," he complained. "I worried about it all night, and I have no idea what to do. I'm losing my apartment at the end of the month, and I'm foreign, so I'm not allowed to work--" he stopped to appreciate two girls who were walking in the opposite direction, admiring them from every angle before turning back to his friend--"so you tell me, Evan, what should I do?" He blinked.

The two girls laughed, knowing they were being watched by the tall guy with the good hair. They turned and waved at the boys before continuing their walk toward some unknown destination on the sprawling Columbia campus.

"Well, friend, I actually might have a solution for you, believe it or not," Evan said, smiling.

Pietro stopped walking and turned to look at his friend.

"Really? You're not shitting me?"

Evan laughed, a laugh that crinkled his eyes and showed a perfect smile. "Man, you shouldn't try to swear; between your accent and your delivery, it's just twenty kinds of wrong.

"But as I was saying, I think I might have a solution. Remember my friend Marguerite?" The two boys entered the building and he lowered his voice to compensate.

Pietro nodded. "Pretty girl? Red hair?" He made a gesture of big hair, bouncing all over the place. "Nice, um, body?" His hands moved out in front of him, continuing to make bouncing motions.

Evan laughed. "Yeah, her. She has a problem, and you might be able to help her with it. I've arranged to meet her for lunch, I'll let her tell you about it, okay?"

**********

Marguerite looked suspiciously at the two boys sitting across from her. Evan had been her friend since they were freshmen, and she was pretty sure she trusted him, but even for him, this was a pretty cockamamie scheme.

The other boy she didn't know very well at all. Tall, dark and handsome, which she knew from bitter experience wasn't a combination to be trusted. At all. The fact that his eyelashes were longer than her own made him even more suspect.

They placed their orders, and she looked again at Pietro. "You're down with this? I mean, you really would marry me? Just so you could stay here?"

He looked back at her, a frank look, an honest look. He nodded. "I'm desperate. You have no idea what it's like where I'm from. It's the definition of 'one-horse-village'," he said earnestly.

She grinned. "You mean 'one-horse-town'," she corrected gently. He took the correction with a smile of his own, blinking those lashes at her, green eyes glimmering with amusement.

A person who could laugh at himself. Hmm.

"I don't understand, though, exactly what you get out of it?" he queried. "You already have an apartment? And it's the new millennium, surely your own family wouldn't put you out in the street over a baby?"

Marguerite sighed. "Well, you wouldn't think so, but my granny is weird. Very old-fashioned. And she owns the building. Three units total. Right now, she and I share the ground floor. There's a roof-top one room, and then there's the second floor, which is a two bedroom, and she's allowed to let it out to a family member for less than value. I know she'd let me have it, if I could show her that I'm a respectable married lady, and not the fuck-up grandchild she's been raising for the last seven years."

He glanced at Evan, then back at her, appraising her. "You're a senior at an Ivy League institution, surely no one would think you're a 'fuck-up'?"

She had to smile at his pronunciation of "fuck-up". She sighed again. "Well, again, you wouldn't think so, would you? But like I said, she's very old-fashioned, like from the old country old-fashioned. Having a baby without a father would just be really bad to her, that's all." She bit her lip. "But I want this baby. And I want to keep what little good opinion she has left of me, you know? She's the only family I have in the world, and it matters to me." She hadn't meant for it to sound so plaintive. She also hadn't meant to tear up. Good gravy. Must be the hormones.

Pietro placed his hand over hers where it rested on the table between them. "Old-fashioned, from the old country? Believe me, that's something I do understand. Very well."

He smiled at her. "Mar-guer-ite? Yes? I'm saying this correctly? Like the drink, perhaps?" He laughed. "If I'm going to be your husband, I should be able to say it correctly, so I'd better begin practicing now."

"No, not like the drink," she responded, red curls bouncing. "Like the flower, the daisy?" She looked at him, glancing at Evan when he sucked the last of his coke from the bottom of the glass.

"Like the daisy," he repeated thoughtfully, taking her in.

"And when are you due? When will your baby be born?" he asked curiously.

"End of May," she responded. "Right after graduation."

"So if you two do this, it will just be until school's over?" Evan questioned carefully. "Just a one year thing, right?" He looked between them.

They looked at each other, then back at him.

"Yeah," Marguerite responded with a smile. "As long as he doesn't smoke or anything--" she looked interrogatively at him, and he responded with a definite negative shake of his head "--I'm in. I can be married to him for one academic year." She nodded decisively at him.

"I can be married to you for a year," she repeated, turning her hand over in his.

"Okay," he responded. "So where does one go in New York City to get married quickly?"