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

“Yeah,” Bowles said, peering back at the cops and smiling. What was he smiling about? Were they laughing at me? “That’ll do just fine, son.”


I hurriedly fixed their teas, trying to be cool and collected, but I nearly scalded my hand pouring the hot water into the large take-out cups. I arranged the containers in a tray, rang everything up, and then handed him the box of scones and his change. What did they think of me? Why was he looking at me like that? Kept staring at my every move. What did he think would happen?


Talking and laughing, the cops walked away, heading out with their breakfast, but Bowles stayed behind and dropped some change in the tip jar. “So you finally decided to give Drika a hand out front.”


I was going to serve Annie, one of the town’s bank tellers, but stopped and looked over at Bowles. “Uh, yeah,” I muttered, not sure what he’d meant by that remark.


Chapter 10