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 joined him in the living room. He was sitting in the armchair, his favorite spot, still turning that rooster in his hands.


“You have your passport?” I asked mechanically. He didn’t even need his passport to cross the border. He had a work permit.


“I have everything right here.” Hank patted his shirt pocket.


“Well, let me put the rooster in your carry-on at least.” I grabbed it from his hand. “You can’t just walk through the airport with that stupid thing.”


“Yeah, it is,” I snapped, unzipping the top fold of his carry-on suitcase and stuffing the rooster in there.


“Hey, be careful not to break it. And don’t put it in the top pocket. It’ll crack when I shove the suitcase in the—”


“Jesus,” I grumbled under my breath, brusquely zipping the pocket close, “you seem to care more about this damn rooster than you do about me.” The second the words were out, I wanted to take them back. I shot him a quick look. “Sorry.”


Chapter 36