The Woe We Deserve

Chapter 30

Wednesday and Xavier sat quietly at their usual spots, working on their respective homework at his shed. Usually, she tried to be productive, after all, the faster they were both done, the faster they could start on their extracurricular activities... But this was not one of those nights. The Shakespeare play they were studying in class was not her favorite—she preferred his bloodier works—and she couldn't stop thinking about her earlier conversations with Xavier and her mother. Conversations where she'd learned how much Xavier cared about being liked by the Addams, or had her mother almost moved to tears by the idea.

It baffled her that everybody was making such a big deal about it. Xavier was her boyfriend, sure, but thousands of sixteen-year-olds had boyfriends, and only a fraction of those relationships survived graduation.

She hadn't put much thought into their future. THEIR future. It freaked her out. She pictured herself being her mother's age. Married with a tired face, hair pulled back into a single braid—just like the drawing she had found in Xavier's sketchpad the day he ran away to New York.

Was that just a coincidence? Wednesday wasn't a huge believer of coincidences.

Then she thought about the alternative. She thought about a life without Xavier—one she had had no trouble picturing just a few months prior—and felt a deep sense of sadness.

She knew it was absurd, and statistically improbably that Xavier would be the only guy she'd ever love. Or that he'd be masochistic enough to choose to spend a whole lifetime with her.

She also felt a twinge of resistance at the idea of forever with anybody. For as long as she could remember she had sworn to herself to never end up like her mother. She didn't want to be a wife. She wanted to be a great writer, or fighter or detective—anything but a wife and mother. Not that those things were bad, but the idea of being defined by them everything she stood for.

Yet the second she realized Xavier was truly anxious to gain her parents' approval there was no hesitation to call her mother and beg her to behave. Suddenly she was invested in the result of this Parents' Weekend.

Wednesday stopped staring at her book and looked up at Xavier. She had been staring at the same page for at least ten minutes. Luckily, Xavier was too invested in his Art assignment to have a tsunami.

The internal debate she had been conducting in her head evaporated as she watched him draw. There it was—the same intensity that had first caught her attention. A look in the eyes that made him stand out from a sea of blue uniforms. She saw it in his eyes every time he got lost in a drawing or a painting. It was the same kind of concentration she felt whenever she got lost in her writing, a force pushing her towards the end, demanding her to write faster.

She watched his hands as he colored; moving quickly but carefully over the drawing, bringing it closer to life with each stroke. Wednesday was obsessed with his hands, whether they were covered in paint, or ink, or in this case, charcoal. Whenever they spent time in his shed, they usually ended up looking completely grimy. She liked grimy.

When she returned her eyes to his face, she was met with a smirking Xavier. How long had she been staring hungrily at his hands? For a panicked second she worried he might also secretly be a mindreader.

"Shakespeare not doing it for you tonight?" he teased.

Wednesday smirked back and shut her book, not even bothering to mark her page—there was no need; she never made it past the first page of Act II. "I prefer his tragedies."

"Naturally." Xavier chuckled as stretched out his hand, rubbing into his right palm with his left thumb. She'd seen him do this a hundred times, after getting sucked into his latest piece.