Disclaimer: I do not own Recess or any of its characters.

Author's Note: So, here is another Recess one-shot!

Just Have To Give You Up

He looked down at the beautiful girl standing next to him. Him being almost a foot taller than most people, he was constantly looking down at people. He couldn't help but see everything about her. Her beautiful dark hair curled and in a hairstyle that made her look very mature, her black dress, long and slim, hugging all the right curves on her body, her smile that spread across her face. But, the one thing that he noticed most was her eyes. Her eyes that looked sad and distant. The smile on her face didn't reach to her eyes. It hardly had for over two weeks now. And while she tried to appear happy to be here with him, he knew she wasn't really happy.

He couldn't really remember when he had started having feelings for her. Maybe when they first met. Maybe in grade school when they used to play all those wacky hijinks on other people. Actually, he was pretty sure that was what had started it all. In fact, if he thought hard enough he could pinpoint an exact day when it all started.

"Are you alright?" she had asked him as she sat on the swing next to him.

"I got detention again," he shook his head, "maybe all these pranks aren't the right thing for me."

"Maybe not," she had smiled at him, "but how are you ever going to know if you quit trying them?"

Of course, as far as he could tell, his feelings had never been returned. When they were in grade school she had thought boys had cooties. Once they got into junior high and high school there had always been a string of boys for her: Francis, Jimmy, Sam, Erwin, Bob, and a couple more thrown in there. The last boy, one he couldn't even mention the name of, was still the one who held her heart. They had never officially gone out, she had just had a crush on him between each of the guys she dated and for the last couple of months. And then, a couple weeks ago the boy (as he had taken to calling him) announced that he was taking someone else to prom.

She had been devastated. So, he had decided to step up and take her to prom. She had never actually told him how truly sad she was, but he knew it. The others had warned him against taking her to prom, saying that she would be hard to make happy and would leave him feeling even more lonely. He refused to listen.

But, as he looked at her looking at the boy, his heart became resolute. He had always been a friend to her, trying to make her happy, and somewhere along the way they had become very close. And, he knew, that if he truly loved her, truly had feelings for her, that he would let her go.

The boy's prom date seemed to not have showed up. The rumors had been flying all around school as to what had happened, but he knew that this was the perfect moment to tell her to go to the boy and say how she felt.

"Just have to give you up," he whispered to himself, but the girl seemed to have heard him say something because she turned to him.

"What did you say?" she asked curiously.

"We need to talk," he softly said, grabbing her arm and leading her to a quiet table.

"Yeah?" she smiled at him, softly.

"I think you deserve to be here with somebody else," he painfully said, quite clearly looking at the boy. She followed his gaze and turned back to him with a guilty look on her face.

"We're just friends," she tried to protest, "I decided to come with you, remember?"

"The direction of your gaze would suggest otherwise," he mused, "You came with me because he already had a prom date. I understand that, now, go to him. I promise I will understand."

"Thank you so much," she happily said as she wrapped her arms around him in a big hug before walking off.

"That was a great thing you did," a voice spoke up behind him. He turned around to see Gretchen Grundler take the seat next to him.

"She deserves to be happy," he shrugged.

"And so do you," Gretchen informed him, "maybe now you can finally move on with your life."

"It's going to be hard," he admitted, but then looked at the girl as she approached the boy. The boy smiled at her and they talked in low whispers before a slow song started to play.

Vince LaSalle watched as his best friend, TJ Detweiler, shyly asked the girl of his and TJ's dreams, Ashley Spinelli, to dance. Spinelli, almost more shyly than TJ, accepted and they began to sway to the music, wrapping their arms around each other. Vince smiled as he saw how happy Spinelli looked, and even how happy TJ looked.

Vince had known all along that Ashley Spinelli and TJ Detweiler belonged together. A small part of him had always hoped that maybe he was wrong. But, now that he was watching them together, Vince was glad that the small, selfish part of him had been wrong all along.

'Maybe,' Vince thought, 'Gretchen is right and I can finally move on with my life.'

He then turned to the girl sitting next to him, who was also dateless for prom and smiled at her.

"Gretchen Grundler," he stood up and grabbed her hand to help her stand up, "may I have this dance?"

And he knew as he and Gretchen began to slow dance that he would look back on this night for not one, but for two reasons. The night that he started to get over his crush on Spinelli, and the night that his feelings for another one of his friends started to change.

---

Author's Note: Okay, so I hope you enjoyed my new little story. Of course, it always comes back to TJ/Spinelli in the end. I'm trying to work on a series of one-shots for each of the characters by themselves though, even though it make take a couple of weeks.