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

“Dad, uh, this is my friend Chris. Chris, this is Herman, my father.” Hank moved aside to let his father shake my hand.


Herman’s handshake was firm but short. “What happened to your head?” he asked, right off, tucking his hand back in his pocket. His stare moved over me from head to toe as though he was searching for something.


“Chris slipped on some broken eggs in his kitchen.”


“Right. Right.” Herman coughed and looked inside the house over my shoulder. “Yeah, we drove by your little shop there in town.” He sniffed and gave me a deep look. “Cakes and things.”


“A bakery and coffee shop,” I sputtered, losing the little confidence I’d managed to build.


“Should we go inside?” Standing behind Herman, Hank looked at me with wide eyes. “Have a drink or something?”


Chapter 63