He pulled out the chair across from me, dropping into it without hesitation. “Only words I trust are 2Pac’s,” he quipped, stealing one of my chicken nuggets like we’d known each other for years.

“You only trust 2Pac?” I huffed out a small, reluctant laugh.

“Only words that speak to me,” he answered with a smirk, popping the chicken nugget into his mouth.

I watched him for a second before glancing down at my book. “So what, you don’t mess with fiction?”

“Meh,” he said, leaning back in his chair, “fiction is just lying with extra steps.”

“That’s a terrible take.”

“Nah, it’s facts,” he said, grinning. “People out here making up stories when real life’s already wild enough. Why read Jurassic Park when I got my Uncle Reggie? The Man is built like a dinosaur, I swear to God.”

A laugh slipped out before I could stop it. “What?”

“He got this long-ass neck. Like a brontosaurus. You ever seen a dude where you look at him, and you just know he gotta buy special shirts?”

I shook my head. “That’s not a real problem.”

“It’s a real problem when your mama sends you to the store and you gotta find a 3XL tall. Man’s out here built like a lamppost.”

I shook my head again, flipping a page in my book just for something to do. “That’s crazy.”

“Crazy is him trying to squeeze into a normal car like he ain’t six-foot-eight,” he said, shaking his head. “Had to take the seat out just to fit.” He popped another chicken nugget into his mouth, nodding at my book again. “Wait, does that book really have dinosaurs in it?”

Raising a brow, I nodded. “Yeah. But it’s not like the movie. The book’s more—” I paused, trying to find the right word.

“Wordy?” he suggested, raising a brow of his own. “Boring?”

I shot him a look. “Scientific,” I corrected. “Detailed.”

“Same thing,” he said with a shrug.

I exhaled through my nose, shaking my head. “It’s more about how everything goes wrong. People think they got everything under control, but they don’t.”

He considered that, nodding slowly. “So it’s about people being stupid.”

I sighed, feeling the urge to argue, but the truth was, he wasn’t wrong. “Pretty much.”

“That does sound kinda fire,” he said, stealing another nugget.

“Told you.”

He pointed at me. “Alright, you win this round, Jurassic Park.”

I couldn’t suppress a small flicker of amusement.

I wasn’t used to people like him—people who didn’t walk on eggshells around me, who weren’t stiff with uncertainty, as if they were trying to figure out what was wrong with me before deciding if I was worth talking to.