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

“You’ll get AIDS into your damn food. Go fucking clean up.”


Shocked by the nastiness of his words, I got to my feet and touched my head where the pain was the sharpest, then looked at my fingers. “He came to me for advice,” I whispered, straightening up and giving Aleid a long look. “I never touched him. Never encouraged those feelings. But they scare you, don’t they?” I picked up the toppled chair and leaned my bloody hands on it, trying to stay calm. “Talk your son, man. Talk to him. Ask him. No? Rather not, right?” I was so angry, so insulted, that I couldn’t even yell. “No, you’d rather beat the shit out of me, than have an honest talk with your gay son.”


Aleid’s eyes narrowed and he made a face. “He ain’t gay. Just been spending too much time with you, is all. I told my sister it wasn’t a good idea, but her and Liliana ganged up on me, as usual—”


Chapter 52