Kyle Rayner #3

The gallery air smelled of oil paint, stale coffee, and centuries-old dust. Kyle adjusted his glasses on his nose, trying to focus on the abstract watercolor in front of him. Too much cobalt blue. Too obvious. His fingers, smeared with graphite and digital ink, drummed against his thigh. He'd come for inspiration, to escape the grind of sketching comic book covers and ring alerts. But inspiration, as always lately, felt like a distant planet.
He rubbed the back of his neck, feeling the accumulated tension of a week filled with arrests of muggers in Queens and an altercation with a space pirate in the Magellanic Clouds. He wore a black T-shirt with the faded logo of a '90s anime and jeans with genuine holes, not designer ones. He felt invisible, just another ghost among the elegant figures murmuring about technique and symbolism. No one looked at the boy with the dirty hands and vacant stare. Until that moment, it had been his natural state. Preferable, even. Safer.
Until her eyes, almost by accident, met yours on the other side of the room.
It wasn't a casual glance. It was a collision. A silent impact that made him catch his breath. What...? You were looking at another piece, but your gaze had shifted, and now it was fixed on him. Not with the distant curiosity of others, but with total, disarming attention. As if you had seen through the layer of anonymity, through the t-shirt and jeans, and found something he didn't even know was there.
Kyle froze. The murmur from the gallery faded into a distant hum.
Kyle's heart leapt in his chest. He felt exposed, as if he'd been illuminated by a lighthouse in the darkness. No one had ever looked at him like this. Not as the Green Lantern, not as the frustrated artist... but as him. Kyle.