The best for him

(short story. comments welcome.)

She woke up, sweaty. It was 3 'o clock in the morning. Shikha knew it wasn't the Van Helsing she read the last night. Something else had been keeping her awake since last weekend. She revisited the sequence of events.

Friday evening:
"Heyyyy...", she exclaimed. She spotted him. Along with him, was his new girlfriend. The girlfriend was well-dressed for the occasion; she was about to meet his boyfriend's best friend, who happened to be a pretty dame called Shikha.

"This would be the eleventh lady", Shikha sighed to herself.

That they chose The Reverence for dinner was not an arbitrary decision. He always called Shikha up to meet his new girlfriends at the same restrobar. He loved the place. Probably she did too, but he never asked.

She recalled the first time she met him through a common friend, at the same place. He was a lovable guy - macho, nice, and would have got any girl he wanted badly. But he didn't want Shikha. They became very close friends, and he made best use of her good 'personality judgment' (as he would call it) to evaluate his girlfriends. He would call her every month to meet his new girlfriend for dinner. They would talk about everything in the world, and in the end she would pass her verdict.

Typically the verdict would be announced over a phone call. That call would decide whether he would break up with the girl the same night, or continue to see her more for some days.

She marveled at how every time he managed to get a girl with a distinct persona.
And he would tell her later, "Did you notice the way she talks?" "I love the way she talks about all types of cuisine.", and she would nod.

He was leaving for foreign waters the next day. She wondered whether he had told the girlfriend about it yet.

She talked to the girl - about Hermione of Harry Potter, about Mandy Moore of A Walk to Remember, and about Dominique of The Fountainhead. The girl had no clue about any.

She switched topics to politics, golf, and stock market.

The 'girlfriend' just hogged and sipped wine while Shikha and he discussed hundreds of topics for another hour.

He knew what she was going to say. Still, he called Shikha while driving the girl back home.

"So.....?", was the rhetorical question.
"Are you crazy? What made you think about this girl? She's not even good enough to fake intelligence, let alone have any.", she almost shouted into the phone.
"Okay", he disconnected, and planned how to break up the same night. He was good at it now.

He got an early morning flight to catch, and the new girl did not know about it yet anyways.

Saturday Early Morning:

He had been waiting for an hour to see if she would come to see him off. There was no trace, and her cell phone wasn't responding. Then he caught a glimpse of her in the crowd. He ran back and hugged her.

They didn't say anything else for a while.

He started, "You never figured out what kind of girl I am looking for, did you?"
He had a smile, the fake one, she recognized.

She was startled by the question. She recovered quickly, and responded, "Not the ones that were, for sure. Not your types."

"Do you know why you were the person I wanted them to meet?"

"...hmm...because you trust me to know what's best for you?"

"I know who's best for me. And I know I am not the best for her. I never told her."

"Interesting. So why did you make all those girls meet me?"

"Now they all know who's the best for me."

He didn't say anything else. He turned and walked slowly towards the flight security check.
He didn't look back.
She didn't call him.