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

“Goodbye, Christensen Peiders,” Lewis said dramatically, of course.


“Take care, Lewis. I’ll talk to you soon…all right?”


But of course, he’d already hung up. 21


I was startled awake by the sound of my doorbell ringing. Confused, I checked the clock on my living room wall. It was almost seven in the evening and I’d slept for hours, right here on my couch. Someone was knocking on my door. I rose, glimpsed the empty plate on the coffee table and realized that I’d eaten a dozen cookies and drank three beers before passing out. I wasn’t proud of myself, but I’d give myself a break about it, at least for today.


A little anxious about unexpected visits, but determine not to be intimidated, I walked up to my front door, but didn’t unlock it. “Yeah? Who is it?”


Donnie’s mother? I wasn’t at all prepared for this.


Chapter 55