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Everybody in the mansion was good at something. Phil could make a turkey call. Joshua made surprisingly good drinks for being underage. Even Hollie was double-jointed. But of all the talents in the house, there was one that Elise respected the most.
When you were upset, especially if tears were involved, Colton was your man.
She saw it first when he comforted his sister when she was eliminated from the show. He was weeping openly, but he didn't hesitate to put his own feelings aside just to make sure she was okay first. She'd seen it last when he'd pulled Hollie against his chest and quietly soothed her as she cried into his shirt. And the times in between? They were innumerable.
Yes sir. She thought she'd had a limit as to just how much she could respect someone. Colton consistently proved her wrong.
Tonight, she witnessed it again. It was Jessica. Overwhelmed by the horror or being the person with the least amount of votes, though Elise could tell her a good few horror stories about that one, she'd held it together until they'd made it back to the mansion, where there was a universal craving for ice cream at that point. For once everyone was getting along perfectly, and that, unsurprisingly, meant that by the time they had it all spooned out something had to go wrong. She'd picked up her bowl, she'd bumped into Colton, and she'd dropped it. It was almost mortifying just how much ice cream went EVERYWHERE.
Inevitably, she'd burst into apologies. And then, shortly after, she'd burst into tears.
Colton hadn't even hesitated. Elise had watched as he hugged Jessica and calmed her as best as he could before he'd insisted on helping her clean it up.
She didn't really want to admit it, but she thought about it for the rest of the evening. By the time she and Colton ended up in the living room later that night, her with a notebook and him with a Bible, she was starting to feel a little creepily obsessed. She was writing song lyrics - or trying to, rather - but Colton's seemingly bottomless compassion grabbed her and refused to let go.
As was wont to happen, she opened her mouth and threw some words into the air before she'd even thought them through.
"You're good at that."
He glanced up at her, eyebrows going skyward. "What?" he asked with a little laugh.
"That whole...comforting thing." Great, now she felt massively embarrassed, but she had to try to see this through now, lest she look even creepier than she felt. "Like with Jessica.
He grinned and looked down. "I mean..."
"No no, don't you go being all humble on me. I know you. I know you're about to do that."
"Well, I mean!" He threw his hands in the air with another laugh, the corners of his eyes crinkling. "What do you, like, even say to that, man?"
"I don't know!" Elise buried her face in her hands and groaned in misery. "I'm sorry, sometimes I just don't think and-"
"I know." He grinned. "I know you too, okay?"
"Grrrrph." She threw her head back and smiled despite herself. "What I MEANT was...it's nice to see a guy who gives a shit." She paused. "Crap. Sorry. Crap."
He waved her off, sliding his bookmark into his Bible and tilting his head to the side as he regarded her. "Don't worry about it. Just because I don't curse doesn't mean you have to stop too."
She didn't know how she was supposed to explain just how desperately she DID need to, though. If she respected Colton this much, she was almost desperate for him to respect her too. She wanted to know it wasn't just a one-way thing.
She paused. Her mind had an almost horrifying ability to reveal to her the most bizarre subconscious secrets in the most eloquent of ways. This one, though, felt a little too intimate for her liking.
She wanted his respect so much that some part of her wanted to change an integral part of herself just to impress him? Elise wrinkled her nose. Something told her that was perhaps the opposite way to impress him.
"You're thinking too hard." Colton's murmur called her out of her thoughts and she focused on him again.
Her cheeks flushed as she smiled sheepishly. "Guilty as charged. How'd you know?"
He shrugged, but his smiling eyes never moved away from her own. "I just do." He leaned forward and propped his elbows on his knees with a soft sigh. "My youth pastor back home said I always had a gift for empathy."
"Yeah?"
"Mm-hmm." He nodded. "Maybe that's what you're seeing so much of in me."
"Yeah, but it's more than that, though," she pressed. "It's not just you feeling what others feel. It's how you act on it to make them feel better. It's compassion."
Colton considered this, glancing down at the floor. "...God calls all of us to compassion." He shrugged once more and shook his head. "I'm just doing my job. The fact that it feels so good and fulfilling to do that's just a bonus."
He was remarkable. Absolutely remarkable. He spoke with the wisdom of a man twice his age sometimes, and Elise fancied that was the reason why she wondered sometimes what it would be like to be more than friends with him. She never let those thoughts last very long. The age difference between them was sizeable enough to deter her for the time being, but still...she found herself thinking about it often. He had such a potential to floor her with one sentence, with one word, and it had her staring at him with awe now.
The mouth kicked back into gear now, just like she might have expected.
"Are you just, like, perfect or something?"
Colton's eyes got huge in surprise before he burst out laughing. "Geez, Elise!"
"I'm serious!" She spread her arms wide in exuberance and emphasis. "Just listen to you! You don't cuss, you actually give a damn about people, you're following this moral code when most people could give a shit about it...Jesus!"
"I'm not perfect!" he managed between laughs. He held up his hands, trying to stave off another verbal romp, and she complied, even with how much she wanted to do the exact opposite. "I'm not. No one is."
"Yeah? Prove it."
"I do bad stuff all the time!"
"Oh, yeah right!"
Colton scoffed and fell back into the couch. He frowned. After a few moments of silence, he pointed at her. "I'm envious of Phil."
"That's not, like, bad, though."
"I mean, I'm not supposed to envy things."
"But that's not the same. I mean, I want to hear about legitimate bad things that you've done."
He thought again. "I ran over my girlfriend's dog when she was in the car with her."
"Wait, on purpose?"
He grinned despite himself. "No."
"Did she forgive you?"
"Given that we broke up about a week later..."
She didn't want to admit that she felt relieved when she heard that, but man, she was.
"Not enough? Fine. Umm." He pursed his lips in contemplation and began to ruffle his hair. "I'm really vain sometimes."
"So is everyone."
"Elise, I probably use more hair product in a day than you use in a year."
She grinned at him. "That's debatable. So I'm not convinced."
"Grr." He was starting to look helpless. "I made my sister cry once."
"Intentionally?"
He winced. "No."
"Go on."
This time, he thought for quite a while in absolute silence. It was late, Elise noticed. Given what an early sleeper Colton was, she knew he must be getting exhausted. But she was fascinated now. She wanted to hear more, maybe to prove her point of his perfection. He opened his mouth again, but this time he didn't meet her eyes. "Sometimes...I'm glad I'm here. Instead of my sister."
"Colton..."
"No, don't try to make this look prettier than it is." He leaned forward and sighed heavily. He looked more pained than she'd ever seen him before. "I've met such great people here in all of you. You're all my friends and I really like all of you. And I hope we all stay in touch even after we get out of here. I've had such great opportunities. And I should be hating it and wishing my sister was here instead."
Elise scooted forward on the couch and furrowed her eyebrows. "That's not true."
"Yes it is," he quietly insisted. "But I just can't bring myself to feel that bad about it, because..."
She waited while his eyes sought hers again.
"...because maybe life would've really sucked if I hadn't met all of you."
His eyes softened, then, became infinitely more tender, so much so that it almost took her breath away. She wanted so badly to read a deeper subtext in them. She wanted them to be whispering that he'd thrown in the 'all of' as an afterthought, that really she was the whole reason he loved being here.
She wanted to, but years had taught her not to expect that much. She bit her bottom lip.
His eyes darted away then, and he cleared his throat. "Well, I'm bushed. I should get to bed."
"Colton-" Elise interrupted as he stood up. He paused and looked down at her, rubbing the back of his neck. "...I really...I'm really glad I met you." Her cheeks were flushing, but she couldn't look away. He had to know that she meant this. "You're probably the best man I've ever met."
She wanted him to read the subtext in her eyes too. She wanted him to get that for all she cared he was the only man she'd ever met, that he had both her respect and her heart, and she was infinitely worried that she'd never get the courage to say it to his face.
Colton hadn't said he was empathetic for nothing.
He smiled softly at her and tucked his Bible against his narrow hip, but instead of leaving the room he approached where she was sitting. "Thanks," he murmured. He tilted his head to the side. And then he reached toward her. As his fingertips brushed along the ridge of her cheekbone, she felt fire blaze up in his touch's wake. "I'll see you tomorrow?"
Her mouth was dry and her heart was pounding, so she nodded.
This time, as he left the room, she began to entertain that the next day might dawn with a great deal more hope than she expected. She began to think that she might have a chance. And so she gleefully let herself check out his rear end. For the first time since she'd met him, she didn't feel guilty about it, because maybe now she deserved him a little more.