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 could already feel the loneliness seeping back into my life. He had everything I was looking for in a partner and now he was going to leave me.


I heard Hank getting out of his chair and yearned for his arms around me again. Seconds later, his warm hands were on my bare shoulders, but I flinched, his touch stirring the sediments at the bottom of my soul. “You’re not saying much, Chris,” he whispered.


I turned around and pushed myself into his arms. “I’m trying not to fall apart.”


“I’m sorry.” Hank rocked me gently, leaning his chin into my hair. After a while, he left the room. Of course I knew not to chase him. He needed time to gather his strength, too. So I did what I always did in times of sorrow or stress.


The rain lashed the living room window and the wild August wind rattled the panels of the house. It was one in the afternoon, but already dark outside, and I couldn’t have been happier about the weather. There was nothing to do and nowhere to go.


Chapter 28