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 didn’t know how long I’d been at it when I heard splashing and looked up to see Hank kneeling by the stream, in the grey cobbles, with his hand deep in the dark wet sand. “Collecting samples?” I called out to him.


Hank came walking back to me. “Wow,” he said, crouching to look at my drawing. “It’s good.”


“Thank you.” I blew on the paper and decided I’d cut myself some slack. “I’d forgotten how much I love to draw.” I smiled up at him. “I guess I was a little disconnected from that part of myself in the last year. Today, seeing you do what you love to do, reminded me of my own passion.”


“Really? That’s amazing then.” Hank unrolled his jeans, set his rod down and settled next to me. “You’re talented. You should keep at it.” Then he looked back at the river.


“What is it about rivers that fascinate you?”


Chapter 26