Pendulum Promises

Monica Mansour and Otto Harrington will never agree on why they broke up.

She cheated, or he cheated, or they both did. Everyone seems to know what happened when they can't even decide it between them.

Like a pendulum clock, they swing. Side to side. Head to head. They're a ticking time bomb.

For the sake of their shared friend group, they decide to set their feelings aside. It shouldn't be too difficult to stay friends. Or, more accurately, become friends.

As they grow closer, old fractures surface. The foundation they never had. The traumas they never faced. Slowly, what they thought they knew about each other begins to unravel, and they're forced to confront the real truth of what happened between them.

Set against the charming, rustic architecture of Edinburgh, PENDULUM PROMISES follows enemies turned lovers who perhaps should have first learned the value of friendship.

. . .

Monica Mansour can't be bothered with communicating. Years of caring for her dementia-ridden father have taught her that survival often looks like agreement, omission, and moving on. She avoids the subject of the breakup because it leads nowhere; they will never agree, and she knows it. She needs this friend group - she already finds friendship hard enough - and Otto's opinion, frankly, ranks low on her list of concerns. Still, every time he speaks, her body betrays her, and she sees red before she can stop herself.

Otto Harrington doesn't realise he's not listening. Handsome, charming, and gifted on the football pitch, he has spent his life being indulged rather than corrected. Everything comes easily to Otto; it always has. Except Monica. She occupies his thoughts with an insistence that irritates and unmoors him, despite what she did to him - or perhaps because of it. He doesn't hate anyone, and he wouldn't say he hates her. But he enjoys pressing until her composure slips; watching her unravel. Man, does he love to unravel her.