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 9-13Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 9 Summary
Wells waits outside Josephine’s room, annoyed that she isn’t ready to go down to the cocktail party. He is thinking about seeing Josephine in the bath when she finally emerges in a green dress. He’s taken by her appearance. Josephine explains that her parents called, worried about her whereabouts, and she was trying to convince them that she is in fact with Wells. Wells insists that they FaceTime the Doyles to prove where she is. He’s gruff on the phone, and hangs up abruptly. Surprised by his curtness, Josephine asks who hurt him in the past.
On the way down to the party, Wells can’t stop studying Josephine. He dismisses his thoughts, reminding himself that he’s now technically her boss. Meanwhile, Josephine makes conversation. She pretends to be a fan of another golfer to rile Wells up. Wells is overcome by emotion, realizing that he likes Josephine and that she might “want the best for him” (72).
Chapter 10 Summary
At the party, Josephine and Wells decide not to drink. She suggests they mingle with his friends, but Wells isn’t close with any of the other players. His only friend is the hockey player Burgess Abraham, with whom he meets for a beer every so often. Josephine privately muses on everything that she’s learning about Wells. She then tells him about Tallulah, insisting that friendship is important.
They continue chatting and bantering until Buck interrupts and asks to speak to Wells alone. Meanwhile, the other caddies flock around Josephine, eager to hear her story and to know why she’s with Wells. She realizes they think that she and Wells are romantically involved. She is convinced that Wells isn’t interested in her that way even though he’s done some nice things for her in recent days. When Wells resurfaces, he puts himself between Josephine and the other caddies. Then, while watching the fireworks show afterward, he and Josephine stand very close together, nearly kissing at one point.
Upstairs in the hallway outside Josephine’s room, Josephine and Wells agree that they can’t be intimate. However, there’s still an energy between them as they chat about meeting up for the match the next morning.
Chapter 11 Summary
Wells sleeps poorly. He’s worried about the tournament and thinking about Josephine. At 5 am, he gets up and goes out to walk the course. He runs into Josephine, who’s also up early surveying the course. They chat about the upcoming match and Josephine reminds Wells to dismiss his fears and enjoy the game. Wells is surprised by Josephine’s encouragement and starts opening up about his relationships with his parents and mentors. Josephine continues her pep talk, assuring Wells that he can still be successful and encouraging him to think outside the box.
Josephine and Wells go to get breakfast together. Wells is shocked when he sees Josephine giving herself an insulin shot. He wishes he could help and support her more. Afterward, he asks Josephine for her dad’s number so he can text him about a game he played years prior. In his room alone, he calls the Doyles and asks what he can do to help Josephine care for herself.
Chapter 12 Summary
Wells runs into Josephine outside of the bag room before the match. They joke and banter for a moment before Josephine goes in to get what she needs for the tournament. She’s a little anxious about encountering the other caddies and the conversation eases her nerves.
The first day of the four-day tournament doesn’t go well for Wells and Josephine. Afterward, Josephine grabs a drink with another caddie named Ricky. They chat about the tournament and their respective bosses. Tallulah’s call interrupts their conversation.
On the phone, Josephine updates Tallulah on her new job with Wells. She exclaims about Wells’s attractive figure and bad attitude, insisting that his nice butt “doesn’t make up for his temper” (110). Wells appears, grabs the phone, and hangs up the call, having overheard Josephine. Josephine is hurt. Wells feels guilty when he realizes who she was talking to.
In the elevator together afterward, Wells apologizes for ending the call but insists that Josephine should quit now if she’s going to abandon him. They get into an argument and Josephine realizes that Wells played badly on purpose. He admits that he was trying to get her to leave. She assures him that she’s not giving up on him before retreating to her room.
Chapter 13 Summary
Wells looks for Josephine the next morning, wanting to explain himself. He’s confused by his feelings but doesn’t want to let Josephine down. He’s still mad at himself for hanging up on Tallulah and can’t stop thinking about Josephine’s attractive body. He dismisses the latter thoughts when he sees Josephine.
They discuss the upcoming match. Josephine wants him to take her advice on the course as they’re a team. She makes him promise he won’t give up on himself and tries to remind him of his love for the sport. Wells is taken by Josephine’s advice and by her appearance. She then promises to send him a pantless and braless photo of herself in her uniform if he does well today.
Chapters 9-13 Analysis
Throughout Chapters 9-13, the San Antonio tournament stop acts as the primary backdrop and inspiration for the narrative’s developing conflicts and tensions. The narrative setting thrusts Josephine and Wells into closer proximity, and in turn complicates the nature and stakes of their relationship. The tournament stop “put[s] them in close quarters” (69) and inspires their developing attraction to one another.
Throughout the four-day tournament, Josephine and Wells must learn to share space and to communicate effectively, beginning to feel The Redeeming Power of Love. Their primary objectives in San Antonio are to focus on golf, to improve Wells’s game, to win back his reputation with the media and his fans, and to resurrect his golfing career. However, Josephine and Wells’s unexpected and intense romantic and sexual feelings for one another threaten to distract them from these goals. The novel uses this charged energy between the two protagonists as a way to amplify the narrative tension and to complicate the characters’ understandings of love, success, and redemption.
Meanwhile Josephine and Wells’s evolving working dynamic introduces the novel’s thematic exploration of The Importance of Encouragement and Support. As Josephine is now Wells’s caddie, she knows that “any fanlike behavior would be unprofessional” (73). She’s been devoted to his career for five years but understands that her new relationship with Wells requires a different level of sensitivity and care. The PGA Tour is “a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity” (73) that she’s determined not to sabotage with her own developing feelings for Wells. She does so by trying to focus on building up Wells, giving him pep talks, reminding him of his love for golf, and promising him that she isn’t going to abandon him.
Throughout the first days of the tournament, Josephine and Wells’s repeated and intimate dialogues capture Josephine’s sensitivity and empathy. Although their relationship doesn’t “necessarily feel like a boss-employee relationship” (74), Josephine is committed to the goals she and Wells have set out to accomplish. In order to do so, she asks Wells questions, listens to his stories and complaints, and offers him emotional and psychological advice. These facets of the characters’ exchanges capture the ways in which encouragement and support from a loyal confidante might boost the individual’s belief in himself.
Josephine’s investment in Wells’s success begins to change Wells’s outlook on himself, his relationships, and his circumstances, enabling his Journey Toward Fulfillment and Personal Growth. Ever since he was young, Wells has felt overlooked, dismissed, and abandoned. In the past, he put his trust in Buck Lee to redeem him. Since Buck was Wells’s lifeline in years past, Wells “expected [his] mentor to be a little more…constant” (77). Due to all of these relational disappointments Wells has experienced throughout his life, he is shocked when Josephine doesn’t immediately give up on him. She’s not only positive and energetic but patient, intuitive, and loyal.
These facets of Josephine’s character compel Wells into a newly-reflective state of mind and even inspire more empathetic behavior on his part. The scene where Wells sees Josephine injecting insulin marks a significant turning point in his character arc, as it awakens him to his selfishness and makes him want to invest in Josephine’s life the way she’s investing in his. His decision to call her parents and ask about her condition is his character’s first step toward personal growth, conveying his desire to atone for his bad behaviors and to reciprocate Josephine’s love and support. In these ways, he and Josephine are beginning to influence and empower one another.
Related Titles
By Tessa Bailey
