53 pages • 1 hour read
Tessa BaileyFangirl Down
Fiction | Novel | Adult | Published in 2024A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapters 19-24Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 19 Summary
Josephine doesn’t seem like herself when Wells comes to her room the next morning. She’s groggy and moody, finally admitting that she woke up with high blood sugar after miscalculating her insulin injection the night before. Wells asks what he can do to help and offers to jog in the hallway with her to lower her blood sugar. Josephine’s mood starts to improve after the jog and they chat about the upcoming day.
Meanwhile, Wells can’t stop thinking about how much he likes spending time with Josephine. They kiss and start touching each other when Wells’s phone rings. It’s Nate, and he’s thrilled about Wells’s comeback. He excitedly announces all of the offers they’ve already gotten for new sponsorships. Nate has arranged for him to settle the deals in the conference room that morning. After the call, he and Josephine chat about the news, flirt, and get ready.
Chapter 20 Summary
Josephine and Wells dress in matching outfits before heading to the conference room. In the empty space, they start kissing again and just before beginning oral sex, Kip Collings, a famous golfer, knocks on the door. Wells is irritated by the interruption but Kip expresses his excitement over Wells’s comeback and Josephine’s work as a caddie.
Chapter 21 Summary
Josephine and Wells aren’t happy when they discover they’re paired up with the golfer Buster Calhoun on the course. He and Wells hurl insults at each other throughout the game and Calhoun flirts with Josephine, offering to hire her. Wells gets upset, but Josephine calms him down, assuring him Calhoun isn’t worth the fight.
On the final hole, Wells panics, suddenly terrified that he’s going to fail. Josephine helps him calm down, focus, and visualize the shot. He makes it. Afterward, Wells insists he doesn’t care about the media and just wants to be with Josephine.
Chapter 22 Summary
Josephine and Wells wend their way through countless fans and reporters. Wells is thrilled with his success but isn’t interested in conversing with the media as he wants to be alone with Josephine. She then tells him she’s been given her own private bag room and suggests they go there. In the bag room, they have intense, aggressive sex. Wells is overwhelmed by feeling throughout the encounter and can’t believe how much he wants Josephine. He even starts imagining their future together during intercourse. He wonders if he’s turning into a romantic and realizes that he wants Josephine to own him.
After they both climax, Josephine and Wells discuss the next tournament stop. It’s in the Dominican Republic, but Josephine doesn’t have a passport, as her parents never wanted her to leave the country because of her diabetes. Wells insists that he’ll skip that stop as he doesn’t want to play without her. He suggests that they pick back up in California.
Josephine feels disappointed to miss out on the tournament but realizes she should spend the next week and a half working on the pro shop back home anyway. She and Wells are both sad while anticipating their time apart.
Chapter 23 Summary
Josephine thinks about sex with Wells while preparing to meet him for drinks. She’s thrilled by their sexual encounter as Wells is the first man who hasn’t treated her like she’s fragile.
On the way to the hotel bar, Josephine runs into Buck. Josephine is bothered by his manner because he seems surprised that she’s a good caddie because she’s a woman. While they’re talking, she looks up and sees a news report about her and Wells on the lobby television. The headline indicates that Wells only hired her because she’s a downtrodden diabetic and he took pity on her. Josephine is angry but stands up to Buck, defending Wells and insisting her situation has nothing to do with Wells’s comeback.
Afterward, she runs into Wells who insists he can explain everything. He swears that he doesn’t see Josephine as a charity case. He only told Buck about the pro shop and her condition because she encouraged him to do anything in his power to get back into the tournament. He didn’t think Buck would exploit this information.
Josephine understands but also wants to be respected for her skill and talent. She suggests that they take a break from their romantic entanglement so they’ll both be treated like professionals. Wells is disappointed, as he’d planned to ask her to be his girlfriend over drinks. However, they make an agreement not to talk until California.
Chapter 24 Summary
Josephine returns to Palm Beach alone and spends the next week “surveying the progress” (233) she’s made on the Golden Tee. Meanwhile, she thinks about Wells, wondering what he’s doing and feeling lonely. She’s glad to be back in Palm Beach working on the shop but also misses Wells and the tournament.
Her parents arrive at the shop, interrupting her thoughts. Josephine admits to everything that happened with the pro shop and her insurance. To improve her mood, Jim tells Josephine a funny anecdote Wells told him on the phone that morning. Josephine is shocked to learn that Wells has been calling her dad every day. They often talk about golf, but her parents think Wells is in love with her as he’s always finding clever ways to ask questions about her. Josephine isn’t sure how to feel. That evening, she goes home, changes the sensor on her glucose monitor, and falls asleep.
Chapters 19-24 Analysis
Throughout Chapters 19-24, the third-person narration provides insight into Josephine’s and Wells’s respective interiorities, and thus, their developing feelings for one another as they embrace The Redeeming Power of Love. Over the course of the novel thus far, the narrator has alternated between inhabiting Josephine’s and Wells’s consciousnesses in order to develop their internal worlds. This means that in some passages the narrator describes the narrative world according to Josephine’s perspective, while in others the narrator describes the narrative world according to Wells’s perspective. These shifts between the protagonists’ mental and emotional spheres heighten the tension between them and reveal the ways in which they are impacting one another’s personal development. The narrator’s expansive capacities in turn underscore Josephine’s and Wells’s mutual desires to encourage, support, and love one another.
The narration expands the scope of Josephine and Wells’s relationship on the page by presenting their overlapping internal experiences when they’re both together and apart. For example, in Chapter 19, the narrator shifts her attention to Wells’s psyche when he arrives at Josephine’s suite and notices that “something [is] wrong” (177). While inhabiting Wells’s mental space, the narrator uses the syntax and diction that Wells would use to authenticate his point of view and emotional experience. The narrator reveals how worried Wells is about Josephine and how considerate he is of her when she says of their morning workout plans that:
Wells didn’t give a flying fuck what anyone thought, but…Josephine did. When it came to some things. Like her capabilities. Her strength. Needing a run for the sake of her health fell under both of those headings. She was strong because of her struggle, not in spite of it, but that was his belief. It didn’t necessarily match how she felt in a vulnerable moment. (182)
This passage of interiority underscores the evolution of Wells’s regard for Josephine: He’s not only focused on ensuring that she feels healthy and strong but that she is respected. He doesn’t want other people to see her as a weak, dependent, charity case and therefore refuses to treat her in this manner.
The passage is particularly important to understanding the conflicts that develop between Wells and Josephine in the subsequent chapters as they wrestle with their Journey Toward Fulfillment and Personal Growth. It reveals the heart of Wells’s intentions and proves that he never wanted Buck Lee to exploit Josephine’s condition for his own gain. However, this passage also contrasts with subsequent passages of Josephine’s interiority, which serve to reveal the heart of her emotional experience and her frustrated, complex feelings for Wells and their future as lovers and coworkers.
When Josephine and Wells agree to spend a week and a half apart, the narrator turns her attention to Josephine’s interiority to explore the ways in which Josephine’s developing relationship with Wells is changing how she feels about herself and her future. Since the narrator moves freely between Josephine’s and Wells’s points of view, the narrator is able to attend to Josphine’s psychic state even when she and Wells aren’t sharing the same physical space. In Chapter 24, the narrator thus follows Josephine back to Palm Beach and the Golden Tee. This setting augments Josephine’s sensitive emotional state and offers the narrator an entryway into Josephine’s vulnerable consciousness. While working with Wells has given her the money to make the improvements on the pro shop, the narrator reveals that Josephine has “never felt lonelier” (233) than when she returns home.
Being on her own makes Josephine realize how attached she’s grown to Wells and how important his encouragement and support has been to her in recent weeks. The narrator is thus excavating these complicated emotional experiences to heighten the narrative tension and to explore the ways in which even the most meaningful intimate relationships face challenges and obstacles. Furthermore, these moments of interiority reveal that Josephine’s feelings for Wells are developing at the same rate as Wells’s feelings for Josephine.
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