They sat face-to-face on the lunch table, yet miles apart.
She toyed the plump lemon in her hand, absentmindedly. Her manicured nails stroking the soft, smooth peel gently, as if caressing the vulnerable skin of a baby. She has always dreamt of having a baby yet she knew he couldn’t. Her crimson nail polish danced with the bright yellow hue of the lemon. Bathed in brilliant daylight, the lemon almost appeared golden. She looked at it affectionately; a subtle curve rippled at the corner of her glossed lips. She did need something golden to illuminate her perplexed life which was dimmed by his caprice and violence. She remembered last night when he thwarted the whole set of china on the floor. Porcelain shattered everywhere. Fragments reflected the golden light from the flamboyant chandelier. Blinding her eyes. Sealing her tears. A spattered piece grazed her ankle. Blood bloomed like crimson lotus. Every inch of her body ached when she walked. The pain wasn’t solely from her foot but stemmed from her heart. Creeping into her veins. Bursting from her ankle. She felt like the little mermaid, who foolishly drank the witch’s potion. But who was the prince?
He sliced the steak with that pair of silver cutlery. He was so used to it that he almost forgot its origin. Now memory struck him that it was the one year anniversary gift from her sister. Plagued by this realization, he had an immediate impulse to defenestrate it. Yet he remained calm. At least for now. He gazed contemptuously at the flamboyant engraving on the cutlery, as well as the dark blots of rust. He could distinguish that it wasn’t pure silver even at the first sight, although he accepted the gift delightfully then. He should had also distinguished that she was but a coquette who swindled for money, gaudy as this adorned cutlery yet worthless as scrap metals.
The lingering silence between them was so thick that it solidified the air. They scrutinized each other obscurely through this barrier, miles apart.
She sliced the lemon into pieces and started to squeeze it. All juice fell into the glass of water and vanished without leaving a trace.  Despite its deceptive plump appearance, the lemon wasn’t that juicy after all, but the glass of diluted juice tasted astoundingly sour. She suddenly got annoyed with the lemon and squeezed it with full strength. She squeezed the lemon so hard that she almost had a hallucination that she was actually squeezing his beguilingly lenient heart, collecting all his remaining love for her. She diluted those piteously meager drops of love in his blood, thus the love could spread throughout his body and all her missteps would be forgiven. Everywhere there would be a strong taste, an inerasable remark. Driven by this magical lemonade of love, once again his fingertips would tenderly caress her delicate clavicle, instead of slapping her already swollen cheek and smashing her already scanty pride. Her ear rang. She shut her eyes and squeezed harder.
To vent his indignation he sliced the steak mercilessly, into tiny countless pieces. He imagined that the steak was her, luscious and alluring, inviting every single epicure to come over and take a bite. How could he accept this? A chef held rights to his signature dish. Without him she was merely a stiff, unappetizing steak that the humblest flies wouldn’t even bother to patronize. What right did she have to accost those villains, hang around with strangers in bars, and squander his money? Foreign smell of aftershave roamed the house like an owner. She squeezed every dollar out of his credit card to treat “friends” or “colleagues”. And she would feign her childish innocence as if she was just squeezing a lemon. When he demanded a serious conversation she was as elusive as a snake, and to all neighbors she whined about his lack of care or his fierce temper. As if the dishonorable was the victim and the cuckold was the culprit. As if a steak with alien bite marks was legitimate in claiming to be fresh-baked and it was all the chef’s fault.
His aftershave lurked around the room like a spy, colliding with her perfume particles that danced with full stretch.  It was a competition of olfactory, from miles apart.
Fresh juice drops splashed on table; one drop missed her left eye for half inch, meandering down her exquisite cheek like a tear drop. She did not erase it. Instead she looked up, almost proudly, sensing that he was stealing glimpses from her. The pseudo tear drop flaunted on her cheek like a monument. She grinned with a mixture of satisfaction and bitterness. Maybe he thought she was crying. Good. That was the effect she wanted to achieve, wasn’t it? She wanted him to feel guilty, to regret, to sympathize with the sorrow by which she was consumed. She yearned for him to dive into her sorrow and dismember it, just like what he did with that silly steak in his plate. The intimacy he shared with the steak bitted her heart like little ants. She had a sudden motive to spray the whole glass of lemon juice in his sanctimonious face. Let him taste her acridity.
The steak has slimmed into strips and diced, randomly distributed in the plate like a puzzle. He couldn’t recall what the original pattern was, just like how their old time of unhindered love had slipped his memory. The reminiscence was lost, so he didn’t feel sorry for the awkward present at all. You wouldn’t feel sorry for a story with an amputated beginning, the same way you wouldn’t regret for a plate of diced meat if you don’t remember its original presence as a tempting steak. He had a slight sense that the woman sitting across from him was weeping, yet he didn’t care. Even crocodiles’ tears are more precious than hers. The person who should feel guilty was not him, but her. She was the one who invited strange men into their house, spent his money on them and slept with them. She was the one who was always whining and self-pitying and pleading innocence. He gazed at the puzzle in the plate, picked up the fork and pierced through a piece, somehow feeling avenged.
Granting oneself invincible by pretending the counterpart to be invisible. That was the trick, to drawn the remnant of care in the torrent of distance and silence. Miles apart, it was feasible to disguise.
She sipped the lemonade. There was something wrong. She squeezed so wildly that she forgot to get rid of the seeds. It became an annoying mixture, like her life. She knew that all along; she was just trying to ignore that fact. As if excluding the seeds when squeezing could prove their non-existence in the first place. Everything she had been doing wasn’t exactly for vengeance, but for excruciating herself with these overwhelming self-pity thoughts. Or rather, for penalizing herself for the crimes she refused to confess. There was no way she could extricate herself from her ill behavior, because the way she saw it was simply twisted and lensed. Like a masochistic she lived in such pathos. Surely she wouldn’t admit that it was possibly retribution.
He leisurely placed the fork in his mouth and chewed the meat forcefully and with deliberate dilatory. Swallow. He felt the beef sliding down his esophagus, compelling to gravity. He should leave her no control of her fate. Digest her with gastric acid. Teach her real pain. Lemonade wasn’t real bitterness. Self-realization would be. 
He rose his head from the plate and gazed at the woman sitting across from him. She was staring at him as well. There was a shiny liquid enshrouding her eyes. It was miles apart, but they saw each other much clearer than they saw themselves.