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

Spraying water into the deep sinks, I started thinking of Hank again. A few days ago, on Tuesday, Hank had said he was working on a solution that could change things for us. But I hadn’t gotten a call from him since then. I missed him so much. When would I feel his arms around me again?


“Chris.” Donnie poked his head in the dish pit entrance, “do you want me to make a new batch of pancake batter?”


“Huh?” I was distracted, getting my shirt wet.


Donnie stared at me for a second, his intense dark eyes narrowing under his black baseball cap. “The pancake batter. Do you want me to fix—”


“If it’s under the mark on the container, yes, please.” I nodded at him. “But take a break first, Donnie.”


Chapter 40