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

Hank stepped back into the house. “Chris…it’s so lonely out there. And that house they set me up in is so depressing.”


“Hm, what are you trying to say?” I joked, stepping up to him.


He leaned his back on the close door and let out a long breath. He seemed so vulnerable and troubled.


I couldn’t make light of this. Had he ever stayed over at a lover’s home? Was this his first time? “I’ve been trying to muster the courage to ask you to stay over all night.” I grabbed both his hands and squeezed them hard. “I should have.”


“Hey, cowboy, take those boots off and put ‘em under my bed.”9


The next morning, when the toast popped up, I flipped the omelet into a plate and danced my way to the fridge for the orange juice. I couldn’t remember the last time I’d been in my kitchen this time of the day. I’d been at the Frontier at first light, for the last two years. Never even taken a sick day since we’d opened.


Chapter 21