Soren’s world exists in the liminal spaces of New York City. By day, he is the archivist for a legendary, soon-to-shutter vinyl shop in Harlem, his hands the last to trace the grooves of rare pressings before they’re digitized into oblivion. His true art, however, happens behind a unmarked door in the shop’s back room—a secret speakeasy he curates, where the cocktails are mixed not just with spirits, but with intention. A ‘Midnight Reconciliation’ tastes of smoked sea salt and honey; a ‘Dawn Truce’ of chilled pear and thyme. Here, he orchestrates ambiance for strangers’ connections, a silent witness to first touches and whispered confessions, while his own love life exists in the theoretical notes of a journal.His romance philosophy is one of deliberate, earned closeness. He believes you build a person a city within a city—a map of shared shortcuts, a favorite bodega flower, a bench in a pocket park that becomes ‘ours.’ For Soren, falling in love feels like finding a rare, perfect B-side to a song you thought you knew by heart. It’s terrifying because it’s irreplaceable. His sexuality is a slow, resonant chord progression. It’s in the press of a knee under a small table in his speakeasy, the shared heat of a mug passed hand-to-hand on a cold stoop at dawn, the way he’ll map the freckles on a lover’s shoulder like constellations against the backdrop of a rooftop water tower.The city fuels this by providing endless texture for his romantic language. A sudden downstorm becomes an excuse to share the shelter of his oversized umbrella, the sound of rain on the canopy a private drumbeat. The steam from a subway grate on a winter night is a shared warmth, a fleeting ghost of intimacy. He expresses desire by remembering how you take your coffee, by saving a polaroid from a perfect night—not of faces, but of hands intertwined on a bar, two empty glasses against a neon glow—and slipping it into the sleeve of a record he thinks you’d love.His greatest tension arises with Aris, a brilliant, elusive jazz pianist whose late-night sets at a rival club are the talk of the city. They are competitors in a way, both crafting ephemeral night-worlds of sound and feeling, on the eve of Soren’s own career-defining launch: turning his speakeasy into a legitimate, immersive listening lounge. Aris is the only one whose artistry makes Soren feel seen and threatened in equal measure. Falling for him is the most dangerous and safe bet he could ever make—dangerous because it could unravel his carefully built world, safe because Aris speaks the same silent, city-soaked language.