"Are you trying to get me to take to my top off, Steven?" She frowned in mock seriousness.
"No, I would never…that's not what I meant," he stammered. He seemed alarmed at the accusation. Julia debated whether or not to make him sweat for a while longer but then felt sorry for him. "Relax, I'm just pulling your leg," she grinned.
Steven sighed in exasperation. "Well stop fooling around, or I won't make a 3d model of you!" He held up the camera and sternly instructed her to turn ninety degrees.
"Yes, sir!" she said obediently. She turned side-on and repeated the pose. He barely managed to take another photo before they both succumbed to helpless laughter again.
Eventually they got photos of her in the same pose from every angle. "Now I need one from the top down," said Steven. He stood on a chair and took a picture of the top of her head. Then she watched as he downloaded the pictures to his computer. "Good god, my hair looks terrible," she said, mortified. It had gone all frizzy in the damp heat. "Why didn't you tell me?"
"Don't be silly, you look beautiful," he said automatically. Then he did a double-take. "I mean, uh, in a professional kind of way…" He looked like he was about to blush again.
"Thanks Steven, you're really sweet. But I'm still deleting the evidence before I leave."
"If you like," he said amicably. He set up the images in the appropriate order and ran his program. Julia held her breath and waited for the model to appear.
She burst out laughing. "I look like I'm wearing a Madonna outfit drawn by Picasso!"
Steven looked a bit hurt. "I did say the white wouldn't work very well. Maybe you should have taken it off, after all." He fiddled around with the software and somehow pushed parts of the model into the correct shape and removed the spikes.
"That looks lot better," Julia said charitably. "You could have left those a bit bigger though." She pointed at her avatar's breasts. Steven drew in a sharp breath. "Let's not go there," he said firmly.
"Fine." She pouted. "But at least make my butt smaller."
"For the love of…" He slumped back in his chair in exasperation. "Are you always this demanding?"
She shrugged. "Probably. My last boyfriend moved to Sydney to get away from me." Julia suddenly realised what she'd just said and was completely mortified. How did that come out? She barely knew Steven but was acting like a complete air-head and telling him far too much about her private life.