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

But it was mine. I’d bought it with my own money. The money I’d earned slaving away as an analyst for the city of Boston for three years. It was my name on the mortgage, not Lewis’s.


Donnie came riding up the street again, and as he passed my house, he slowed down. I waved at him, but he sped away. I felt sorry for the kid. Drika’s brother Aleid and his wife Liliana—Donnie’s parents—worked four jobs between them. Donnie was the eldest of seven kids and seemed to be struggling this summer. I wish I could talk to him, but lately, whenever I tried starting a conversation with him, he’d mutter a few words and find an excuse to leave.


As I was stepping back inside the house, I heard a car coming. The car drove by my house slowly. It was a black Mazda. It was too dark to see who was at the wheel, but I knew it was Hank. I opened my mouth to say something, as though he could hear me, but he drove away, turning left on Dill Street.


Chapter 9