Pineapple Love by Rebecca Klassen
Mum dropped a chunk into her mouth; eyes rolled back like when she eats Milk Tray. I bit the edge of mine, fibres flossing my gaps and incisor stumps, candy sweetness forgotten as the sour lanced my tongue. Mum said, ‘Ten tries before you can decide if you love it.’ I let the soggy clump fall into my lap, and told her I couldn’t love something that hurts.
It was served with cheese at Michaela from school’s birthday party. I showed Mum the red dot on the roof of my mouth from the cocktail stick and asked, ‘Who gives kids weird food on sharp sticks?’ She laughed and got me ice cubes to suck.
At Michaela’s sleepover, we ate it on pizza. I hated it hot, hated pulling it from my braces, hated myself for telling Michaela that I liked Jason, because she said he was grosser than pineapple on pizza, flicking her picked off fragments into my hair.
In a shopping centre photo booth, I kissed Jason after he’d eaten tropical froyo. That night, I didn’t brush my teeth, tasting him as I looked at our strip of pictures. The next day, Mum found our bonded faces under my pillow. She turned Jason into forbidden fruit with her too soons and nos.
At Michaela’s house party, the one I said would have parents and no boys, Jason mixed pineapple cordial with vodka for me. When he kissed Michaela, the puke pricked my throat. Clutching a plastic bag in Mum’s Ford, she told me they weren’t all arseholes. Ten years later I knew she was wrong as I chewed the fruit in sweet and sour curry at my boss’s dinner party, his hand sliding up my thigh under the table.
But I met Charlie, who got me to a dentist on our honeymoon when I cracked my tooth on unripe core in a piña colada. And because I love Charlie, I bought the ingredients for his favourite upside-down cake. The citric acid stung the cut I got from the tin that stored the syrupy rings. I sucked my finger, tasted metal and sugar, called Mum and told her I was never going to love it. She said she felt unwell, and I told her to see the doctor, that I had to go because my batter was deflating.
Our neighbour’s Hawaiian chicken skewers were okay, the warmth diluting the tartness. Juice dripped down my chin as Charlie told them the cracked tooth story we can laugh about now. Then Mum called. She’d seen the doctor.
It’s a few weeks later. I bought a prepared pot from the supermarket, too tired to chop. We lie in her bed. Tearing off a sliver with my fingernails and placing it on her tongue, she slurps, too weak to chew. I ask if she’d prefer Milk Tray, but she says there’s something about the tingly pain that makes her love pineapple more. I hold her, leaving a piece on my tongue, my heart stinging.
Rebecca Klassen is co-editor of The Phare and a Best of the Net 2025 nominee from Gloucestershire, UK. She has won the London Independent Story Prize and was short/longlisted for the Bath Flash Fiction Award, Flash 500, Bridport Prize, Alpine Fellowship, Laurie Lee Prize, Quiet Man Dave Prize, and the Oxford Flash. Her stories have featured in Mslexia, Fictive Dream, Toronto Journal, Shooter, The Brussels Review, Molotov Cocktail, Writing Magazine, Flash Frontier, Flash Flood, Cranked Anvil, and have been performed at numerous literature festivals and on BBC Radio.
