The Scarlet Letter Society. Mary T. McCarthy

morning, lovely baker. I hope your day is awesome. Your email came just as I was thinking about you. See you Friday for pie meeting…if not before. Ben

      Lisa grinned.

      Blackbirds Pie was a few blocks away from the coffee shop. She had met Ben when she hired his downtown advertising agency to design a new logo and he was assigned to be her graphic designer. At thirty-seven and wanting a baby, she hadn’t been out looking to complicate her life with an affair.

      It was that simple, she thought now, warding off thoughts of how complicated it was. We just really like each other and we have fun together. Lisa could hear the replay in her head as she told the other women her story at the meeting a few months back.

      “So what’s your story, newbie?” Maggie had demanded, by way of welcoming the new member to the club.

      “Well,” Lisa had begun, awkwardly. “Ben is just so sweet and attentive. One day we were having a lunch meeting and drank too much wine and we just ended up totally going at it on the Pier One Imports wicker couch in the back office of my bakery.”

      Eva and Maggie had laughed, so Lisa, grabbing at the skin of her neck absentmindedly with one hand, continued.

      “Ben threw me up against the small walk-in freezer,” she embellished. “We had our tongues halfway down each other’s throats and we couldn’t get our clothes off fast enough.” She paused. “Don’t ask me why, but he grabbed a jar of cherries off the shelf as we made our way to my office. We fed each other maraschino cherries while we made out. Cherry juice dripped everywhere.”

      She finished the story by reporting that she had already replaced the old couch, which had been both uncomfortable and irreversibly stained with cherry juice.

      Recalling it, Lisa’s smile fell. Only she knew that the story was all a lie, a complete and utter fabrication.

      The fictionalized account seemed realistic enough. Lisa didn’t know what to do to stop her unrelenting crush on Ben, and wasn’t sure she wanted it to stop. It had only been a few short months since they met. But they hadn’t so much as kissed, much less drowned each other in any kind of juices.

      Lisa had lied her way in to the Scarlet Letter Society.

      If the women in the club knew she hadn’t actually cheated on her husband, she would have been disinvited from her membership. She felt awful deceiving them, but when Maggie and Eva had visited her bakery one day and she overheard their discussion, she was overcome with curiosity about how they got away with their affairs. The two women had mentioned their third club member moving away, and Lisa had swallowed down her shyness and asked if she could join them for coffee.

      Her five-year marriage hadn’t been particularly miserable, and she loved her husband. Something was just…missing.

      Better Out Than In, she’d written on page one of her current journal—she’d kept one all her life. The worn leather journal, tucked away in its floral Vera Bradley case, knew that her marriage’s main frustration centered on the couple’s inability to get pregnant. But running a business was exhausting and lonely. While she and Ben had started out in a professional relationship that grew into a friendship, the mutual flirtation seemed to grow stronger each day.

      She glanced at the current (and original) Pottery Barn couch, warming at the memory of the last day she’d seen Ben as she hit “reply”:

from:	Lisa [email protected]
to:	Ben [email protected]
date:	Monday, April 9, 2012 at 1:10 PM
subject:	Earlybird You were up early sending email, mister! Busy day, just getting to my inbox. Yes. Friday. Pie. Can’t wait. Will have your favorite flavor ready. :) L

      Lisa wasn’t sure she knew exactly how she’d become such a flirt. From an early age, she had always been reserved. She was prettier than average, though not beautiful; tall, thin, her dark brown eyes exuding inner strength despite uncertainty. She usually dashed on some quick foundation powder, mascara and lip gloss, but only on shop days.

      Her husband’s dominant personality was one of the things that had first drawn her to him—she wanted someone else to be in charge of her life. After they’d met at a Chamber of Commerce event six years ago, Jim’s confidence had won her over and although she never really felt like she was head over heels in love with him, she’d made the thirty-two-year-old-ticking-biological-clock decision to marry him when he asked her, simply because he seemed to need her. A half decade in, and now that she was running a successful business, his domineering persona got on her nerves more than anything. That, and his goddamned obsessive foot fetish.

      The foot fetish had been a favorite topic at Scarlet Letter Society meetings. And it was funny, sort of, except for the part that it was actually happening to her.

      Should I or shouldn’t I? Lisa wrote, and closed the journal, tucking it away in its case inside her purse.

      Her combination island/home discipline weekend behind her, Eva was back in New York. She woke up from a deep sleep to find a tongue inside her. An unshaven face with its perfect two-day growth gently scratched the insides of her thighs as she arched her back. She clutched the pillow beside her and whispered, “Good morning to you, too, sir.”

      His smile touched the most intimate parts of her, and she laughed at the sensation of his chin stubble. He didn’t stray from his task, expertly holding down her upper thighs with his forearms, demanding that she relinquish control to him. It wasn’t something she was used to. In all other parts of her life, if she had nothing else, she had control. There was a reason her name was on the door of the law firm perched high in the Manhattan skyline. It was no accident she was at the top.

      In fact, she recalled now, she preferred to be on top. She squeezed her toned inner thighs together, planning to flip this horny chef onto his back so she could have her own way with him.

      He was having none of it. His hours at the gym weren’t spent there just so he could lift cast iron pans. He now incorporated his broad, strong legs to encircle her feet. She wasn’t going anywhere.

      She knew from experience that she may as well prop a pillow under her head, relax every muscle in her body, and enjoy the ride. As he rotated his tongue, his thumb gently caressed her. In a matter of minutes, she exploded in a powerful, sweet orgasm that left her body quivering.

      His dark, curly, grinning head appeared from under the sheet. He was completely naked, his erection rising to greet her. And then suddenly, the expression on his face turned to horror.

      “Oh my gosh, madame,” the man uttered in his heavy French accent. “Je regrette! I am so sorry. I thought you were someone else. I must have the wrong hotel room. This is so embarrassing.”

      He hopped out of bed, grabbing his pants and practically running in circles to collect his belongings.

      Eva lay on the bed and laughed heartily, her hand over her mouth.

      “Well, to be honest with you, monsieur, I’m not sure whose hotel room you’re supposed to be in, but I wish you would stay in this one.”

      Charles tossed his clothes playfully into the air and plopped himself naked onto the bed.

      “Well in that case, madame, I’m here to serve.”

      Eva laughed again. She honestly believed that half the reason she was having this insane, delicious affair in the first place was Charles’s sense of humor. He could always make her laugh. Not just laugh, but laugh from the belly, when you can’t stop yourself no matter how hard you try. Such laughter was so rare in her life.

      He