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 love this album.” Hank moved in his chair, the wood cracking under his weight. “Rumours?”


“We’re both familiar with those, right?”


Hank only smiled. “You got a thing for roosters, huh?” he asked, after a moment, gazing around at my bright yellow and orange kitchen.


I did. I collected rooster trinkets and plates and even had a rooster calendar and clock. “I don’t know how it got to this,” I said, embarrassed, “but it started with one little thing I got a thrift shop on Main, and then—bam—I’m the creepy rooster guy.”


Hank chuckled and drank his beer. “Those things happen.”


“Yeah, well, I’m that guy I guess,” I said, more seriously. “The lonely single gay man with the rooster collection.” I scoffed and picked up my beer, twirling it around. “Pathetic, huh?”


“Pathetic? No.” Under the wan kitchen lamp hanging low over the table, Hank’s eyes were warm and wonderful. “Quirky, yes. Interesting…definitely.”


Chapter 16