“What do you mean I can’t go out today?” Sam’s voice boomed throughout the restaurant, making the diners at the other tables turn their heads in our direction.
“Sam, get it together,” I warned through gritted teeth as I literally raised a hand to push him back. “Give Tsehay some room.” He’d been crowding her like the asshole he was, but he moved, looking startled when he realized how close he was to her.
I was about to start asking what the hell was going on, but Elias beat me to it and his tone sounded as strained as mine. “What happened?” He was looking at Tsehay, and I suspected it was because if he paid too much attention to Sam, like me, he’d be tempted to pop him on the mouth.
Tsehay looked angry, an expression that didn’t seem to go with her usual easygoing personality. I could tell she was trying to come up with an explanation, and the fact that Sam’s lips were currently sealed told me he was responsible for whatever had caused the argument.
She sighed and turned to look at me. “Mr. Dawit has requested a different team leader for his woreda.”
“What did you do?” I growled as the oaf in question reddened.
Sam tried to posture, but something in my face must have told him I was not in the mood, and clearly neither were Elias or Tsehay. “I ran into him yesterday and asked him some questions, and I guess he didn’t like my tone.”
I dug my fingers into my eyes as I heard matching groans coming from the others. “So you cornered a government official on his day off to ask him questions after we’d already told you to let us handle the communication with him?” I was barely keeping my patience in check.
“I don’t get what the big deal is.”
I was about to explain, but Elias jumped in, looking like he was done holding his tongue with Sam. “The big deal is that you’ve already disrespected Mr. Dawit.” His tone was placid enough, and his voice was not a decibel above proper inside voice, but no one could not mistake the edge in it. “If you cannot mind the social rules and the ways that our people conduct themselves when working with officials, then you are going to impact this project’s development.”
This man was very close to losing his patience. My whole body woke up and took notice because take-charge Elias was hot as fuck.
Sam’s face went from flushed to mottled with an angry red, and I could almost hear the gears in his idiotic head turning. He opened his mouth, but before he did something that he could never take back, I intervened. “There is nothing to say, Sam. You fucked up and now you have to sit this one out.”
He balked at that, but I wasn’t standing by and letting Sam sabotage this entire project because he couldn’t keep his fool mouth shut. I ignored him and turned again to Tsehay and Elias. “How far behind will we get if we only send out two teams this week?” Another yelp came from Sam’s direction, but I didn’t bother looking his way as I waited for an answer.
“It will throw off the schedule completely,” Tsehay answered, and the furrow in her brow told me I didn’t need to point out that kind of setback would be catastrophic for our already-tight deadline.
Elias nodded, already tapping something on his tablet. “We timed it so we’d be done here and at the new sites just as they were gearing up for their quarterly health checks with the families. We can’t get delayed.”
“That’s right. Dammit,” I said, this time turning to glare at Sam. “You need to figure out how to make amends with Mr. Davit so you can get back to work. For now we need to stay on task. What do you suggest, Elias?”
He gave me a funny look like he didn’t expect me to ask him what to do, but as far as I could tell, he and Tsehay were the ones that knew what we needed to do to stay on our timeline.
Tsehay spoke while he mulled the question over. “Eli can lead Sam’s team.”
Before the man in question could even contemplate complaining, I shut him up. “Don’t.” I wasn’t even sure what I was objecting to, but at least Sam knew enough not to piss me off again.
“What do you think?” I asked Elias as he considered Tsehay’s suggestion. I was extremely aware of the fact that even though I knew this was probably the best solution, I was dreading not having Elias with me all day. That I’d been looking forward to listening the rest of Aristotle and Dante with him.
“I can do that.” He dipped his head at my question, but something in his eyes made me wonder if he was bummed out too. I reminded myself that the only dummy in this equation was me, and Elias was probably more concerned about us being able to do our job.
He looked at Sam, who was still fuming next to us, and clenched his jaw hard. “We can switch one of Sam’s workers with Yohannes, who has the nutrition background, since that’s something I’m not familiar with.”
Sam scoffed like an asshole and I glared in his direction. Elias looked like he was ready give the man a piece of his mind. “You have to go and apologize to Mr. Dawit. He is a reasonable man, but you have publicly disrespected him. Tsehay and I were going to talk to him, but you made this mess. So you will have to fix it.”
“What?” He had the gall to sound offended. “All I did was ask a couple of questions.”
This time Elias straightened to his full height, and I could see why he always kept that easy and quick smile. He didn’t need to assert himself with posturing.
