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

We didn’t say anything, the silence stretching between us like an oil spill. I chewed my food, my thoughts running around in circles.


Hank was good at pretending to eat, moving his food around, sipping his beer from time to time. But after a while, my stomach was so tight, I couldn’t swallow another bite. And though the words wouldn’t come, I could still reach out to him—I put my hand over his, and without looking at him, caressed his thumb, hoping to convey what I felt in that simple gesture.


Chapter 33