But, it turned out, they wouldn’t. That noise had not come from his fist. It had come from his head hitting the table.

The next afternoon, Dani cued up Love Actually. She hadn’t seen it since last summer when Max had talked her into an out-of-season viewing. It was still technically out of season, today being only December 9 but close enough. Sometimes, when your life was falling apart, you needed a Christmas movie.

As she watched the opening sequence from the kitchen, where she was making a grilled-cheese sandwich, just like she and Max had done last year after the holiday party, something lurched inside her. She stumbled into the living room and sat down next to Max Minimus on the couch.

The opening scene was a series of people greeting each other at an airport—couples and family and friends embracing and crying and reuniting while Hugh Grant, in a voiceover, talked about love. She looked at it with new eyes as she thought about when she’d come off the plane before the wedding and her heart had leapt to see Max. Or when he’d surprised her on the beach, dispensing what remained the most satisfying hug of her life and saying, “Tell me everything.”

Dani had told Sinéad it didn’t matter if she loved Max, but that wasn’t true. It did matter. Hugh Grant was right. Love always mattered, even if it hurt. And it did hurt.

She loved Max, and he didn’t love her back. But Max wasn’t Vince. Max had never lied to her. And he did love her in some fashion, of that she was sure. He was her friend. He had made a mistake in asking her to move in with him—or to marry him, for god’s sake. He had hurt her deeply when it seemed like he was disregarding everything he knew was important to her.

That stupid list. She had to face the fact that her list had not protected her like it was supposed to. “So much for my list, Max.” Max Minimus barked as if in agreement.

The ironic part was that when she examined her heart, Dani was willing to sacrifice what she’d thought she wanted for “something bigger,” to use Leo’s phrase. But as much fun as she and Max had, as much as he got her in a way no one else did, she couldn’t be with someone who didn’t love her.

What had she told Max about this movie? It seemed like a rom-com, but really it was a romantic tragedy. But as Hugh Grant said, love was still all around.

All right, then. She was sad—gutted, really—but it was a relief to have thought things through.