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

Ashamed, I slumped down into a boot seat. What had I done?


“Hey, where did Hank go?” Drika asked, somewhere behind me.


“To tell the whole town I made a pass at him,” I grumbled inside my hands.


“Oh, shush boy. That man ain’t straight.” Drika squeezed my shoulder. “His eyes were eating you up like you were a golden French pastry.”


“You think so? But I came on too strong. I freakin’ gave him my home address. Am I that desperate?”


She sat in the chair facing mine and pushed a cup of coffee my way. “Maybe you’re a little out of practice, is all.”


“Well, it’s not like I can practice much around here.” I tore a piece of corn bread off and stuffed it into my mouth. Then I realized how vulnerable Hank must have felt, if he was indeed gay. Maybe he’d been flirting with me after all, but then had panicked and fled. I sat up straight in my chair. “You won’t tell anyone about him, right? I mean—if he is gay, he’s definitely not out and must have good reasons not to be.”


Chapter 8