Two years ago, Chris and his boyfriend left the city to settle in a small town at the US-Canada border. Eager to start a new life, Chris bought the Frontier Café, but a year later, his boyfriend dumped him, leaving Chris the only openly gay man in town. Nowadays he's resigned to a life of romantic solitude.<br><br>Hank spent the last years traveling through the country for his job as a water plant engineer. Deeply closeted, he's careful about the men he meets. Like the rivers he studies, he runs fast through the land.<br><br>In town only for a few weeks, Hank is intent on getting the job done and returning home out west to take care of his father. But Chris’s warm manner and decadent desserts are no match for Hank’s defense mechanisms. For the first time in his life, he finds himself wanting to go with the flow.

No River Wide Enough

I checked my watch. It was almost four. It would be quiet for an hour or two and then later, the local teenagers would show up for frozen yogurt and milkshakes. I liked having the young people around. While they were here, they weren’t out there thinking of reckless things to try. Last summer, a few town kids had stolen a tractor and driven straight into a ravine. Thank goodness no one had been seriously hurt.


I remembered growing up in a place where the only exciting thing that ever happened were football games or Valentine’s Day dances. So I tried to give the local kids a safe place where they could play some music and hang out.


I was going to go back inside the fridge and organize the fruit section, but then decided I’d bug Drika instead. I walked through the kitchen and pushed on the door, stepping into the front.


In the dining room, Hank was standing by the front window, engaged in conversation with Drika.


Chapter 7