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

“Are you mad at me or something?” Hank asked in an uncertain voice. “‘Cause whatever stupid thing I might have said or—”


“No, Hank.” I walked to a stool and plopped down on it. “I’m not mad at all. I—something happened.”


Calmly, I explained the last days. I told him about the love letter, the condoms, Aleid’s reaction, my fall and resulting stitches, the spray-painted hate on my house, Roy’s surprise visit, ending my tale with Donnie’s threats of running away. As always, Hank listened without interrupting my flow of words.


“I want you to know that I’m getting more support than anything else,” I said, wanting to reassure him. “I think, in a couple of weeks, everything will go back to normal.” He was being too quiet and I worried. “Hank?”


“You needed stitches?” he finally said. His voice was ghostly. “They wrote those words on your house?”


“Hank…I know it sounds bad, like—”


“And you didn’t think to call me and let me know you were in danger?”


Chapter 59