All The Wild Ones | Wildfire Series

Rhymes and Reasons

GRAYSON

Monday's child is fair of face,

Tuesday's child is full of grace,

Wednesday's child is full of woe,

Thursday's child has far to go,

Friday's child is loving and giving,

Saturday's child works hard for a living,

And the child that is born on the Sabbath day

Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.

Before going to campus, I'd searched the entire internet for any way to contact Wednesday Adler Elez. And I didn't find a goddamn thing. But I did find this poem.

Who knew why Nessa's parents decided to call her a day of the week, but this nursery rhyme was supposedly the reason behind the name of a different Wednesday.

Wednesday's child is full of woe.

There wasn't an ounce of surprise in my body when Nessa didn't want to hear me out. That she shot me down before getting a chance to explain. She didn't even want me to explain.

I'd been expecting anger. The tears got me, though. Nessa wasn't just mad or upset or frustrated. She was hurt, so hurt that there were moments in our short conversation that she couldn't even look at me. She couldn't look at me, and she certainly wasn't about to accept anything that I had to say about why I'd been gone.

Spitting out that I was in a coma could have gone two ways. On the one hand, her tears might have thickened. And god, a breakdown in the middle of the street wasn't what I wanted to do to her. What I wanted was to get her into the car for a bit of privacy. Not to mention a guarantee that she wouldn't—couldn't—bolt when things got tough. Because on the other hand, I also knew that if I told her I was in a coma, she might not have believed me.

I made a promise to myself on the way to campus that I wouldn't rush this. No matter how hard it was. Because every time I'd tried to force the truth on Nessa in the past, it failed. If she wasn't ready to hear it, she wouldn't believe it.

It only took me two seconds of seeing the pain in her eyes to know that she wasn't ready to hear it.

Wednesday's child was full of woe.

In every version of The Addams Family, Wednesday Addams was bitter and dark and dry. Full of woe.

My Wednesday was a little bit bitter, too. She was an ounce of dryness, a dash of exasperation. Cynical, but only because darkness had touched her life from time to time.

Nessa was full of woe. She fell so easily into a hole that other people had dug. Her ex shoveled out most of it, and then Quinton and Brodie and assholes at parties had shoveled out more. And she sank deeper and deeper into this lonely pit, thinking that shitty guys existed more than the good ones. And the good ones were for girls who weren't her. That love existed for everyone but her. Thinking she was stuck there.

But one of the many differences between Wednesday Elez and Wednesday Addams was that my pretty, little woeful girl really wanted to be happy. She didn't want to be stuck in a hole or sitting in a lonely pit. She wanted to be loved, and I knew I was the one to do it.

If she let me.

For a long time after Nessa ran into the building, I stood there and stared at it.

A few months ago, I would have run after her. But it had taken all of my energy just to get to this spot in front of Ackley Hall. It was a miracle I'd even made it to campus at all.  Convincing my mom to relinquish my car keys so I could drive here hadn't been an easy feat.

But it was more than physical exhaustion that kept me rooted to the concrete outside.

I'd been expecting her to be mad, and I certainly didn't blame her for being upset. But it hurt so goddamn bad that she didn't reserve some amount of faith in me. Even the tiniest sprinkling of it. After everything I put on the line for her, how could she honestly believe that I'd simply forgotten to text?

Somewhere beneath that thick skull of hers, she knew that I hadn't forgotten to text. Nessa had to know that there was an explanation. She asked me today where the hell I'd been and then didn't bother with hearing the answer.

I needed her to know the answer, but she had to want it. I needed Nessa to find me again. Like she had that day in the practice room. Ready to accept the truth.

When she was ready, I'd be there.

So I walked up to her room, slid a note under her door, and then I walked away.

Patience had never really been my forte. But for Nessa Elez, I'd wait a really fucking long time. I owed it to her after she had waited for me.

That didn't make it easy, though. Summer in Modesto dragged. My moms fussed constantly, my head ached. Boredom took over. I tried to practice the piano to prepare for a few gigs I'd booked months ago, but my fingers tripped over each other. Notes blurred together. I couldn't go to the gym, not like I used to when I pushed myself so hard that everything else faded away.

All of my comforts were gone, and the summer dragged.

But after a few weeks, I got a text from Julian that made everything worthwhile.

Julian: Ran into your girl today.

Me: Fuck, really? I'm gonna need a play-by-play.

Julian: She asked me for your new number.

A smile broke free on my face. One of the first genuine smiles in a long ass time.

Julian: And I'll give you that play-by-play, but you're gonna want to sit down.

My smile faltered, and I fell back onto my bed.

Me: Okay, I'm ready.

💗

I know it was short but we needed just a little Grayson POV on that last chapter.
more soon xoxo