While sitting on the couch of Bethany and Joshua's home on Christmas evening, Noah stared down at Nicole's contact on his phone, wondering if he should call her. Noah knew Nicole was capable of bringing this grudge to Australia if she wanted to, which meant he really needed to act fast. At first, Noah gave her some space, just a few days. After she declined all his calls for a week straight, that's when Noah knew Nicole was in this for the long haul. He's even asked Trent what he should do or to see if he'd get through to her, but his response back seemed scripted under Nicole's control, so he hasn't been much help or use. This was the longest amount of time outside of Total Drama filming that the two have spent not talking, and Noah knew Nicole had the determination to bring this grudge to Australia if she wanted to.

As he watched his niece and nephew playing under the tree, and his other siblings together near them, he thought about how much had changed within the past year. One year ago, he was still living with Bethany and Joshua, he had just started going to therapy, and he had been dating Cody for the past few weeks. Outside of his family, the general public didn't know about him and Cody dating, or Noah's sexuality. One year later, things have changed for the better as Cody and Noah are living together in their rented home, their relationship is out for the world to see, he's back in school for good learning about what he loves the most, art, and he has great friends. One thing could be going better for him, like the fact that his sister isn't talking to him.

While Noah was lost in thought, Cody came back to the living room and grabbed Noah's hand, smiling at him as he sat down and took a bite of his cookie that he swiped from the kitchen.

"You know those are for dessert, right?" Noah said.

"Nobody will notice if I just took one of Bethany's cookies." Joshua followed Cody out of the kitchen, also holding one of Bethany's cookies in his hand as he snuck a piece in his mouth.

"You, too?" Noah asked.

"I can't help it. She only makes these once a year." He took another bite as Noah slumped his head down. He was trying to get into the holiday spirit, but he was still upset about the tension surrounding him and Nicole, and Cody knew it, too. Noah focused on the presents under the tree, losing himself in the tinsel of the wrapping paper.

"I know this has been really hard for you." Cody said as he scooted closer and put his hand on his knee. "I'm sure she'll come around."

"At least one of us has faith." Cody got up to walk around and mingle, leaving Joshua and Noah to themselves. He sat down next to him and put a hand on his shoulder.

"Nicole doesn't seem very comfortable on the couch anymore. You two should try to resolve this once and for all." Noah looked over at his brother with a face of vengeance.

"You don't think I've already tried that?" He exclaimed. "She won't answer my calls, and everytime I come over, she disappears. She doesn't want me to forgive her, she wants me out of her life."

"Do you really think she'll let this go on forever?" Noah gave Joshua a look.

"You've met her, right?" Joshua began peering around the room as he noticed Blair with a devilish look across the room and began to stand up.

"Oh, boy. I gotta go tend to our brothers." The doorbell rang as he left, and before Noah could go up and get the door, Bethany came waddling into the living room.

"I'll get it!" Noah was secretly hoping it would be Nicole at the door, but it was his Aunt Amelia, who gasped as she gave Bethany a big hug. After exchanging hellos at the door and taking her coat off, she came right over to Noah and gave him a kiss on the cheek as she hugged him.

"Merry Christmas, my sweet, sweet Noah." She said to him.

"What's so good about it?" He said to himself. She walked away to give the others a hug, and Noah stood up to look for Cody. He found him sitting and talking next to Valerie. Their conversation came to a halt as soon as he came over.

"Why did you stop talking?" Noah asks as he squints his eyes at her.

"Don't worry about it. We're just catching up, keyboardist to keyboardist. Right, Cody?" She winked over at him.

"Yep, nothing going on." Cody says as he chuckles. Noah shook his doubt off and sat down next to Cody.

"So, have you heard about Nicole?" Noah asked Valerie.

"About her Australia study abroad trip or your screaming match with her?" Noah groaned at his sister.

"How do you know about that?"

"Nathan went to see Joshua and saw Nicole at the house, so he asked what happened. Then he told Blair, who told the rest of us quints."

"Of course all the siblings know." Noah was wishing he hadn't even asked, because of course Nicole had already told everyone so they could make their own pre-determined biases about who was right or wrong.

"Have you tried going up to her and apologizing?" Noah gave her a deadpan look.

"Gee, Val. No, I haven't. Good idea." He said sarcastically as he crossed his arms. "She won't return my calls. She's stubborn."

"She may be stubborn, but she's also really sensitive." Valerie mentioned. "Deep down she's probably just really, really hurt. All she wanted was to tell you the good news and you used it to yell at her."

"I know I fucked up, I didn't come talk to you because I needed you to remind me." Noah was starting to get angry. "I'm sorry. I didn't mean to put this all out on you. She's with Trent's family until New Years, and if we aren't talking, she'll probably end up staying over there all of January, too." As he finished his sentence, his brother, Blair, came up to the four of them.

"Uh, Valerie? I think Joshua is onto our annual prank." Valerie groaned as she turned his direction.

"I gotta go. You'll figure this out." With that, Valerie and Blair were off with the rest of the quints. He looked over to Cody and immediately whisked the two away to get a drink.

"Hello, my old friend." Noah says to the wine bottle while free-pouring. He looks back at Cody after taking a swig of his drink. "I have to figure out how to get her to let me apologize so she doesn't spend all of January away from me." Noah and Cody turned around as they heard a wine glass clink to gain everyone's attention.

"Christmas dinner is going to have to be postponed…" Joshua says as he holds an arm to Bethany's shoulder. She's clutching her stomach and seems to be in distress. "Bethany's water just broke." The rest of the siblings and Amelia all crowd around Bethany.

"Mommy!" Hannah says to a stressed Bethany. She does her best to give a smile as a contraction is going down.

"I'm going to be okay, baby. Your little sister is coming a little early, that's all." She stroked her hair as Aunt Amelia pulled a chair up while Joshua went to get her hospital bag. Noah and Cody look over at each other, not sure how to help in this situation when Joshua comes running back.

"Okay, I'm going to take us to the hospital. Noah, Cody, can you take the kids and follow us over in about an hour?" Joshua asks.

"Of course."

"We'll be here and make sure the food doesn't go to waste." Nathan jokes. Joshua rolls his eyes.

"I can always count on you, bro." Nathan and the quints, knowing they are not needed at all in this situation, begin to dig in on the food, and Joshua takes Bethany's hand and whisks her away to the car. Noah and Cody look down at the kids, then at each other.

"I thought mom was having the baby after Christmas." Spencer said. Noah looked down at him.

"Sometimes babies like to come on their own time."

"When can we go see the baby?" Hannah asked with sparkles in her eyes. Cody kneeled to her.

"It's probably going to be a little bit. If we go now, we'd just be sitting in the waiting room, and that's no fun." He said. "Why don't you go with Aunt Amelia and ask her to get you a plate?"

"Okay!" Hannah and Spencer went to go see Aunt Amelia, and Noah and Cody walked over to the couch to sit down. Noah looked over at Cody.

"Should I call Nicole?" Noah asked him.

"Do you think she'd answer you?"

"She will if I call over and over." Noah got out his phone and began dialing Nicole, which, not to his surprise, went to voicemail.

"This is Nicole, I can't get to the phone right now, so please leave a message and-" Noah ended the call and re-dialed. Right back to voicemail after a few times. He did this three or four times until Cody stopped him.

"Why don't you call Trent?" Noah looked over to Cody and rolled his eyes at himself.

"This is why I keep you around." Noah jokes. He exits out of Nicole's contact and begins to call Trent, but after a few rings it went to voicemail. Noah groaned.

"She must have grabbed his phone. Can you try?" Cody nodded as he began dialing Trent's phone, and he answered right away.

"Look man, I don't want to be part of Nicole and Noah's feud, can you tell him to please stop calling us?" Noah took the phone from Cody and put it to his ear.

"Trent, it's Noah. Bethany is having her baby." Trent paused.

"Right now? But she's not due yet!"

"I know! I just figured Nicole would want to know. She kept declining my call." Noah could hear Nicole say something in the background.

"Let us know when you go over there." Trent says.

"We're going to go over there when Joshua tells us to, so we'll call you then." Noah hung up the phone and looked at his phone.

"Well, it's only 5pm. We might as well try to enjoy the night while we wait for the baby to come."

"Thank god. I wanted to get to the chicken pot roast before everyone ate it." Noah chuckled as Cody walked over to the table.


A few hours later, Noah and Cody were sitting in the playroom while they watched Spencer play, while Hannah was fast asleep on Noah's lap. Nathan, Blair, Gerard, Valerie, Gavin, and Bryoson had joined them, and they were chatting waiting for Trent and Nicole to get in.

"Man, what I would have done to get to be a fly on the wall for that conversation." Blair joked after hearing Noah's side of the argument. Gerard thumped him on the head.

"What did I say about saying thoughts out loud?" He asked. "Just because it's true doesn't mean you have to say it out loud."

"Sorry, Noah." Blair told him.

"She'll come around eventually, little bro." Gavin told him. "She can't stay mad at you forever."

"You've met her, right? The girl went through appendicitis for a week and threw it off as cramps." Gerard said. Nathan reached over to Gerard.

"I bet you this will all be behind them by New Years." Nathan said.

"Nah, I don't think so." Bryson butted in. "Fifty bucks says that Nicole will spend New Years without speaking to Noah."

"Deal." Nathan said as he shook Bryson's hand. Noah nodded his head and rolled his eyes, not believing what he was seeing.

"Uh, guys? I'm right here." Noah said.

"Sorry Noah, it would be cheating if we brought you in on this bet, considering you're the one we're betting against." Bryson said, not getting what Noah meant. As everyone kept talking, Nicole and Trent walk in, and the two sit on the far end of Nicole's siblings, the farthest away from Noah. Cody points to Noah's lap and puts a finger to his lip to make sure Trent and Nicole don't wake her up.

"What are you all doing here?" Nicole asked her other siblings.

"We're happy to see you, too!" Valerie said sarcastically.

"How's she doing?" Trent whispers to Cody.

"She's still in there. Should be any minute now." Noah said. "You didn't have to come."

"It got me out of hearing my parents' annual Christmas argument, so yes, I definitely had to come." Trent chuckled.

"Wait. Both of your parents were there?" Cody asked. Trent sighed as he started telling the story.

"Every year they end up arguing about who gets me, and I can't stand it anymore, so this year I suggested we do one Christmas all together. Both sides of the family, all immediate family members, so my cousins, aunts, and uncles from both sides, too. Both sets of grandparents."

"Why is that a bad thing?" Cody asks.

"My aunt just ends up starting crap with my dad, and my mom just sits there and lets it all happen. So believe me, I needed to get out of that house."

"Must be hard to be in the middle of a feud that never ends." Noah said loudly. Nicole didn't say a word as Joshua came into the playroom. He's wearing blue scrubs and a scrub cap, and Spencer comes over to him.

"Dad!" Joshua goes over to Hannah and lightly strokes her hair to wake her up.

"Did mommy have the baby?" She asks.

"She did." She smiles as he picks her up.

"Can we see her?" She asks as she perks up.

"Of course." Joshua looks over to Trent, Nicole, Noah, Cody, and the rest of his siblings. "You guys coming?"

"You all go ahead, we'll stay here and see her later." Cody says to them. Noah and Nicole get up to walk over with Joshua without saying a word to each other, and the rest of the siblings follow. They enter the elevator and head up to the fourth floor and see a tired Bethany in her room cradling the baby in her arms. She smiles as the kids come up to her and awe at the baby's beauty.

"She's so tiny." Hannah says.

"Have you decided on a name yet?" Nicole asks. Bethany looks over at Joshua for approval, and he nods. Bethany looks directly at the rest of the siblings as she tells them the name.

"Emilie Sophia Asper." Nicole smiles over at Joshua, and the rest of the siblings gasp.

"She's named after mom." For a moment, the twins forget about their argument and look each other in the eye, their eyes swelling with tears of happiness.

"Would you two like to hold her?" Joshua asks. Noah looks over to Nicole.

"You can go first." He says. The two walk up to Bethany and she slowly hands the baby over to Nicole, and Noah and the rest of the siblings carefully look over her shoulder.

"She looks like Hannah." Nicole notes.

"She really does. We'll have to compare baby photos." Bethany says. Nicole coos at the baby and bounces her in her arms, then after a few minutes, she looks over to Noah.

"Do you want to hold her?"

"Oh, yeah. I'd love to." Noah looks over to Nicole as she hands the baby over, and he looks at the precious life in his hands. He blinks away a tear as he thinks of how the memory of his mother will be preserved in another human being, even if this baby will never get to meet her. As he continues to hold her, the baby starts to get finicky and yells a soft cry, and he hands her back to Bethany.

"Must be dinner time." Bethany jokes. Joshua looks over to the kids.

"Why don't you go back to the playroom?"

"Do we get to hold the baby too?" Spencer asks.

"You will soon, don't worry. Mom just needs her privacy." He scrunches Spencer's hair as the two go off with Nicole and Noah. The rest of the siblings go back into the elevator with Hannah and Spencer. The two are silent while they hit the floor and get to the playroom. The two are silent as they head down the elevator and are back in the playroom. The kids go in alongside their other aunt and uncles, joining Trent and Cody, but before Nicole walks in, Noah taps her on the shoulder.

"Nicole." She turns around at him, finally ready to listen. "Can we talk? Please?" Nicole folds her arms and sits beside him outside the playroom at a few empty seats.

"All right, I'm listening." Noah breathes a sigh of relief as he's about to state his case.

"It wasn't right that I reacted that way when you were nothing but patient when I left for Total Drama four times. It was stupid of me to assume you were purposely hiding it from me, and I'm sorry." Nicole looked down as she tried to figure out the right words to say.

"You know I had a bumpy childhood, and a weird high school experience. That's why I never told you about Trent until I knew it was real, and why you never heard about the study abroad until we had the student visas approved and the flights booked. I just thought you understood that after everything that happened with our last argument, and I figured you were now in a better place to hear the belated news this time around."

"I am in a better place this time around." Noah defended. "It was like word vomit. Something in me triggered me to feel upset about hearing the news last, and it was like I couldn't control my actions or words." Noah sighed. "I shouldn't have mentioned your past. I regret our whole argument, and I wish it had never happened. If going through the grief process four years too late has taught me anything, it's that you shouldn't let one bad thing that's happened to you dictate how you act for the rest of your life. It's okay to be cautious, but you have to let other people and experiences in."

"Look at you, mister philosophical." Nicole joked.

"I'm serious. I went four years without any direction in my life after mom and dad. I wasted most of my teen years on a reality show getting tortured and publicly humiliated for the whole world to see just so I could avoid facing my grief at home, and what I should have been doing the whole time was be there with you in the grief process together."

"I don't think our life would have turned out the way it did had you not gone on Total Drama. Everything happens for a reason."

"So, do you forgive me? Can we move past this?" Nicole smiled.

"Of course." She leaned in for a hug, which Noah accepted. Noah looked over to the playroom, where they noticed their siblings, Trent, and Cody staring at them this whole time with a smile on their faces, except for Bryson, who was handing money over to Nathan. As soon as Trent noticed Noah was looking, he hit Cody on the arm and everyone looked away, pretending they were never there. Noah laughed as he looked over to Nicole.

"What?" She asked. He pointed to the playroom.

"We have an audience." The two of them walked back to the playroom, where everyone was waiting for them.

"Oh, fancy seeing both of you here." Cody said. Nicole laughed as she sat next to Trent.

"I finally forgave him, but I know you know that." Nicole told him.

"Does this mean you'll stop sleeping on Joshua's couch?" Trent asks her.

"It sure does." He gives her a comforting hug as Noah sits next to Cody.

"What a crazy Christmas." Noah says to everyone.

"I'm just glad you two are speaking again." Valerie says.

"Couldn't you have just pretended everything wasn't fine until after New Years?" Bryson complained. "I'm out fifty bucks." Everyone looked over to the kids again as Nicole leaned her head on Trent's shoulder, thinking about how grateful they are to have each other.