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

“Get us a few beers, will you?” Herman leaned back, cracking his back. “Loosen up the old joints.”


Later, when everything was ready to serve, we decided to sit inside instead, where it was warmer. Herman ate with great appetite, shoveling my potato salad into his mouth like he hadn’t eaten a home cooked meal in years. I recalled Hank telling me that Herman hadn’t even lived with his last wife. He’d married her on a whim and they’d split up two months later. He’d been in and out of retirement homes for two years.


Basically, his life seemed to be a mess.


Chapter 66