Once back inside the country club, she hurried to the bathroom, quickly studying her face in the mirror. She hurriedly wet some paper towels, fixing the smudges in her makeup, trying to do this as quickly as possible because she simply couldn't stand to look at herself. The tile of the floor was cold underneath her bare feet, and she was still shaking from her encounter with Klaus. Before she could spend too much time thinking about it, she hurried out of the bathroom and down the hall into the ballroom.

The first thing she did once she was inside was to head straight from the bar and down two drinks in as many gulps. She was still moderately drunk, but she needed to be blacked out, she needed to be completely unconscious as soon as possible.

Daniel was across the room, chatting excitedly with Cathy from IT. Cami practically ran over to him, standing in front of Cathy from IT, not caring that she was being incredibly rude. "Aardvark," Cami said, invoking their codeword that meant one of them wanted to leave.

"Uh, okay," Daniel said, looking at her concernedly. He looked her up and down, taking in her mussed hair, his eyes widening when he saw she wasn't wearing any shoes.

"Now," she said impatiently, angrily. She turned on her heel and started walking away, not waiting to see if Daniel was following her. She couldn't stand to look at him, she felt so ashamed. She just needed to get out of here, the sooner the better, or she feared she would start crying or hyperventilating or screaming.

Daniel looked apologetically at Cathy from IT. "I'm sorry," he said, "Cami's not…she's not feeling well."

Cami was about to make a clean getaway when her boss Richard stopped her on the way out. "Camille, have you thought any more about the direction for the Beaterrific campaign?"

Something was cracking inside her and she felt like exploding. All this anger, this pain, this stress and anxiety was bubbling over, ready to erupt at any minute. "Yes, Richard," she said, giving him a patronizing smile, "I have thought about it."

"And?"

"And…And. And I think you're the worst boss I've ever had. I think this promotion is a crock of sh*t scheme to get me to do more work for only a marginal pay raise. I think you're trying to soothe your guilty conscience for firing twelve people this past year by promoting some of your quote unquote favorites. And frankly, I don't want to be your favorite. I don't want to be your anything, I don't want to be your Art Director, I don't want to be your employee in any capacity. You told me about the position by making me think that I was getting fired, who does that?!"

Daniel came up behind her, putting his hand on her shoulder. She realized then that she had been shouting. She thought of all the difficulty she had been having in the past few months at work, how she no longer felt like she was valuable there, how she dreaded getting out of bed and going every morning. And she knew that she meant it when she had said she didn't want to work there, and she didn't want the new position. She wanted something that would fulfill her, make her excited to be there, make her feel important.

"What's going on here?" Daniel said.

Richard laughed nervously. "I'm not sure," he said. "I think Camille might have had one too many to drink. I'll tell you what, take the upcoming week off to have some time to yourself, recharge, get your head on straight. In the meantime, I'll have Klaus start work on the campaign, and he'll fill you in when you come back next Monday."

Klaus had come up beside them, keeping his eyes firmly cast to the floor. "I'll be in touch," he said in her general direction, still not looking at her.

"No, Richard, you're not listening to me. I'm not going to take the week off, I no longer work for you," she said, enunciating the last five words clearly and loudly.

"Cami, come on, let's go. Let's go home," Daniel said, his hands on her shoulders, guiding her towards the door. She tried to fight, to hold back, to keep shouting at Richard, but Daniel moved her along.

"I am not coming back to work!" she shouted at Richard as Daniel continued to usher her out of the ballroom. "And I don't appreciate being manhandled by the likes of you," she spat at Daniel.

"What is wrong with you?!" Daniel shouted back. "Don't make me carry you kicking and screaming out of here, because I will do it."

"Why is no one listening to me? Is this what I have to do to be heard? To scream and throw a fit until someone takes notice that I'm unhappy?"

Daniel stopped walking, his hands still on her shoulders, turning her to face him. His face was soft now, but she could see the wild fear in his eyes. Suddenly he pulled her into his arms, holding her tight for a second. She felt herself calming down, the desperate urge to scream ebbing.

"What was that for?" she asked when he pulled away.

"That's the first time, finally, that you admitted you're unhappy."

They didn't say anything for a few moments, just stood looking at each other. Daniel's eyes were brimming with tears, but Cami was drunk enough that she could keep her feelings behind the floodgates.

"Let's go home," Daniel said softly.

When the car was brought around, she got in the back seat. "I'm just going to lie down for a little bit," she slurred. She curled up across the seat and fell asleep.

Once back at their apartment, she woke up to find herself still in her gown, lying next to Daniel in bed. She got up slowly, testing to see if he was awake. Despite having supernatural hearing, he was quite a heavy sleeper, and it was usually rather easy to sneak out of bed to go watch TV in the living room if she couldn't sleep.

Tonight instead of watching TV, she removed her dress, standing in the darkness in only her bra. Her underwear, she realized, were still on the bathroom floor at the country club. The memories from earlier in the night were flooding back to her. Getting belligerently drunk, making a scene in the ballroom. The sex with Klaus. All the shame, the embarrassment, the guilt, the overwhelming despair she felt were so horrendously painful that she blocked them out.

She got into a cold shower, sitting at the bottom of the tub as the water poured over her, raising goosebumps on her skin. The kind of emptiness that was settling inside her was the unpleasant kind, the kind where she would have given anything to start feeling again. It was the numbness that was now making her feel inhuman, robotic. This is why no one can love you, she thought. You don't actually have any real feelings, you're not a real person.

The floodgates opened then, and she sobbed as quietly as she could, her tears mixing with the water from the shower falling all around her. After several minutes, she collected herself. The shower had sobered her up a little bit, and she needed sleep, she was just so exhausted. The sleep couldn't hurt either, she thought, it would be nice to shut her brain off for a little while.

A tiny ember of happiness sparked within her when she realized she no longer had a deadline resting on her shoulders. In fact, she didn't have to go to work on Monday, or at all that week. Or ever again, she thought. She had told Richard that she quit. And she had meant it.

Cami turned off the shower, wrapping herself in the warmth of a towel. Her skin welcomed any bit of warmth it could get; she had probably been in that cold shower for more than twenty minutes.

Getting dressed in the dark, she stumbled over to the bed, still half drunk. She got beneath the covers beside Daniel, who was thankfully still fast asleep. Instinctively she reached out to touch his face, to brush the shaggy hair back from his forehead, but she held back. It was all starting to sink in, the gravity of what she had done. She was so desperate to feel something that she had cheated on him. And he had no idea.

She had to tell him. Her compulsion was to shake him awake, to tell him right then, but she couldn't bring herself to do it.

She sat up in bed, crawled across the bedspread so that she was sitting at the foot of the bed facing him. She sat cross-legged, watching him sleep, feeling shame and remorse seep in and fill every molecule within her. She had cheated. She had quit her job. She had ruined the only two semi-good and consistent things she had in her life. She wondered if it would be her destiny to ruin everything she touched.

Quietly, she got up from the bed and paced around the room. She could not fathom possibly sleeping next to him now as if nothing were wrong, as if she hadn't done this terrible, unforgivable thing.

After a few minutes of pacing, she sat down on the carpet of the floor, right where the floor of the apartment was slightly warped and concave. He was so blissfully unaware that anything was wrong, so innocent and free. She would have given anything to feel that way too.

I'm the worst person in the world, she thought. A despicable excuse for a human. I have ruined everything.

Another thought, more of an abstract impulse entered her head. I can't stay here. She tried to push the thought away, but the more she tried to block it out, the more it fought and grew stronger.

Her brain raced three thoughts ahead of itself, already planning how she would do it. She had her whole life here, all her things, all the things that were hers and Daniel's together. But if she was going to run away, she would have to leave almost all of it behind. She hadn't even decided to run away yet, or where she would go, or how she would get a new job, and already her brain was three steps ahead, planning the whole thing as if it were really going to happen.

Her mind kept arguing with itself. I can't possibly do this— I just have to tell him the truth and hope that he'll forgive me. You have to run away, there's no other choice. No I can't, where will I go? Anywhere but here. I can't go. Well, you can't stay either.

The walls were closing in on her, and she felt as if she were being suffocated. Now that she had thought of running away, she could not get the idea out of her head. I can't leave, I can't leave, I can't leave, she tried to convince herself. I have to stay and try to work through this.

Yet in spite of these mantras that she was repeating over and over in her mind, she got to her feet and started packing.

She grabbed some clothes, her toiletries, anything else essential that she could think of, her phone, her computer. She was almost out the door when she stopped, setting her bag down and walking into the kitchen to get a piece of scrap paper and a pen.

"I'm sorry. I did something bad, and now I have to go. I can't explain. I just need help, and I need to be alone. I'm so sorry. I love you."

Cami left her note on the pillow beside Daniel. Taking one last look around the apartment, she hitched her duffel onto her shoulder and stepped out the door.

Her body went into autopilot mode, and her brain was shut off. She didn't even realize what address she had given to the taxi driver until she was standing on her sister's doorstep, waiting to be let in at three-fifteen in the morning.