Page 156 of The Husband Game

“Twelve hundred … But—but you were an athlete, Charlie. You needed fuel.” Dustin was appalled.

Charlie sat upright, holding out a hand to stop him. “Dustin …”

He winced. “Sorry. You know that.”

“I do. And I did then. But I convinced myself that what I was doing was … being more regimented. It wasn’t an eating disorder. It was part of my training program. Except, I wasn’t getting the nutrients I needed and, well …” He laughed a little bitterly. “That never goes well.”

“How old were you when you started?”

“Calorie restricting?”

“Yeah. If you feel okay talking about it.”

“Twelve? No maybe thirteen.”

Dustin’s jaw dropped. “But what about your parents? Didn’t they notice?”

“Oh, honey, who do you think taught me how to do it?” Charlie let out a pained little laugh. “My mom is a former figure skater, you know.”

“Shit,” Dustin whispered. “That’s what you were talking about before. About the way they treated you. God I … That’s awful.”

“Yeah, it’s pretty fucked up. My mom has an eating disorder she refuses to deal with and she thought she was ‘helping’ me. When you’re that young and your mom teaches you to do it, you think it’s normal. Perfectly natural. She loves you and she wants you to succeed.” He sniffled. “And she did. She loves me but she doesn’t know how to love me in a healthy way. She doesn’t love herself and I was merely a stand-in for who she wanted to be.”

“Oh God, I’m so sorry.” Dustin wanted to reach out and fold Charlie into his arms but he’d retreated. The lounger was too small for him to pull away completely but something about his posture told Dustin his touch wouldn’t be welcomed.

“Thanks.” Charlie sighed wearily. “The irony is, I can’t even blame genetics.”

“Oh?”

“Well, I’m adopted. The human body can’t sustain a pregnancy on so few calories and as much as my parents wanted a child, my mom wasn’t able to stop restricting long enough to carry a baby to term. It took me a long while to piece it all together but I guess there were numerous miscarriages where she denied her low weight was the issue and ignored what the doctors were telling her. It eventually got to a point where she couldn’t even get pregnant. So my parents adopted me. And I became the center of her world and all her hopes and dreams.”

Dustin winced and Charlie let out a tight little laugh.

“Yeah. That’s as fucked up as it sounds.”

“What about your dad?”

“He, uh …” Charlie sighed. “He loved her desperately but he was kind of checked out. I mean, in terms of what she was doing to me when I was teenager, anyway. He tried to get her help. I know he did, but he enabled it too. She knew he’d never leave her so it was toxic as hell and never going to get better.”

“He should have protected you,” Dustin rasped.

“He should have, yes,” Charlie agreed. “But if he pushed back, she’d threaten to leave, and he wasn’t willing to lose her. My health and happiness became collateral damage.”

“Fuck, Charlie.”

“So once I started dating, I had a lot of fucked-up relationships. With men, with food … I was a mess. Skating fed into that. Eventually, I had a not-great relationship with my choreographer that sent me on a downward spiral. I went into the Olympics in a bad headspace. I won a silver medal as a final fuck you but my heart wasn’t in skating anymore and after the medals ceremony, I had a total breakdown. A messy, falling-apart breakdown. Taylor was going through some stuff then too but he held me together enough to get me through the media shit and the closing ceremonies and when we got home I … fell apart. I collapsed and had to be hospitalized and when I woke up in the hospital bed with a feeding tube down my nose and a best friend who was terrified I was going to die, I knew I had to quit skating and focus on my recovery.”

“Did you do it for yourself or Taylor?”

“Oh, for Taylor, no question.” Charlie looked away. “At that point I didn’t care about myself at all. But over the years I got better.”

“You were what, twenty-one at the time?”

“Twenty, but yeah.”

“Shit.”

“Yeah. I was always kind of a prodigy!” Charlie sniffled. “Even at that stuff.”

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