SKOW is one of those movies that I probably watch every decade or so. Although I wasn't quite old enough to see it when it was originally in theatres, I definitely watched it for the first time on a VHS tape that I rented from a video store. I wrote this piece because sometimes after I finish watching a movie, I want to live with the characters for a bit longer. Well, when I started skulking around looking for SKOW fanfic to satisfy my needs, there wasn't very much. It makes sense. Fanfic wasn't a thing when this movie came out. For goodness sake, the internet wasn't even a thing yet. So, I wrote this mini-continuation with the assumption that there isn't much of an audience for it. But if you, like me, have landed here because you're looking for a little bit more, I wrote this for people like us. Thanks for reading.

Watts nudged Keith with her elbow. "You do realize we're walking away from the car, don't you?" The statement drifted into the air as more of a tease than anything else. It certainly wasn't an admonishment. With Keith's arm draped over her shoulders, Watts was feeling far too exquisite to attend to burdensome practicalities like responsibility and sound judgment.

"Are we?" he laughed. "I hadn't noticed."

"You're not worried that the slumlord might miss his Rolls Royce?"

Keith shrugged. "We can circle back and get it later. As long as it's back at the garage by morning, he won't even know that he loaned it to us for the night." Clearly, Keith was in no hurry. He didn't seem to care about the car at all, in fact. What he did seem to care about was kissing her. That much became apparent to Watts almost immediately. She'd often worried about the awkwardness of crossing a line with him if, by some perverse twist of fate, the opportunity ever presented itself. Yet there they were. Fate and opportunity had collided, and Keith wasn't even bothering to tip toe across the line. He was trampling the damn thing. For a guy who hadn't been aware of her feelings for him—or his for her—twenty-four hours before, he was coming up-to-speed pretty fast.

Heedless of time and any associated encumbrances, they weaved happily along the center line of the quiet avenue. Most of the residents had dutifully opted for an early bedtime, so there was no traffic. Occasionally, a dog barked or a sprinkler turned on, but otherwise, the entire world—or at least, their immediate surroundings—belonged to them. Periodically, Keith leaned over and dropped another kiss on Watts. Aside from a dreamy awareness that her reality had shifted drastically in the span of minutes, Watts tethered herself to the moment. She'd been in love with Keith for as long as she could remember, and if he wanted to press her up against the nearest perfectly-manicured hedge and make out like rabbits, she wouldn't be the one to complain.

"So, this doesn't feel weird to you?" she asked, pushing through an ethereal haze to address the one question that was buzzing around in her brain.

"This?" He asked, raising an eyebrow.

"Come on, Keith," she scolded him, motioning between the two of them. "This. You and me, you idiot. Does it not seem strange? I mean, we're crossing a pretty big line here."

"No," he said, grinning at her as he tightened his arm around her shoulder. "It just feels right."

"Okay, then." And she accepted another kiss. Only this time, they stopped moving forward and fully committed to the moment.

"Really right," he whispered against her ear, proving once again that when it came to kissing, he did, in fact, know how to deliver a kiss that killed. She'd never actually doubted him, but she'd also never imagined that he'd be quite so adept at it. "Unbelievably right," he added as his lips transitioned from ear to neck. "Perfectly r—"

"I got it," she laughed.

"I love your laugh," he said, pulling away slowly. His hand closed around hers and he guided her along behind him, still walking away from the car.

"You've heard my laugh before," she pointed out.

"And I've always loved it."

"Well, you might have said so," she told him, bumping her hip against his.

"It's not exactly the sort of thing a guy says to his platonic best friend."

"Why not?"

"Because he just doesn't."

"Yeah, I still don't get it," she said, shaking her head.

"It could make things awkward between them," he explained, tightening his grip on her hand, "because sometimes the sound of her laugh might make him think of her as slightly more than a platonic best friend. And that's why it's better just not to acknowledge it at all."

"You can't be serious," she countered, radiating disbelief.

"Of course, I'm serious. Do you think I'd lie to you?"

"So, what you're saying is that you've thought of us—of you and me—as more than friends?"

"Not with any consistency, but yeah, the thought may have crossed my mind on one or two occasions."

"And you never said anything?"

He smiled. "You never asked."

When they arrived at her door, Watts cleared her throat. "Um, do you want to come in?" she asked.

"Do you want me to come in?" The car had been returned, with no one the wiser, and their night was at an end. Or was it? Now that they'd reached her house, Keith didn't know what the expectation was.

"Well, yeah. If I didn't want you to come in, Keith, I wouldn't have asked." She tugged on their interlocked hands and he followed her into the house.

Inside, one brother lay on the couch with his eyes shuttered and a joint dangling from his fingers. Not far away, in a nearby recliner, a subdued woman with her top askew straddled the other brother. He, too, had a joint in one hand. The other was wrapped around a sweating can of Miller Lite.

"Sickening," Watts muttered. "Let's go to my room."

Once there, with the door firmly shut behind them, he said, "They shouldn't be acting like that in front of you."

"Forget about it. I'm used to it."

"Okay. But I still don't like it," he agreed reluctantly, shelving his concerns. He certainly wasn't going to let Watts' brothers ruin what had been an otherwise perfect night. But that, of course, meant that he had to return his focus to his previous uncertainty about her expectations. If Keith were being perfectly honest with himself, he knew how he wanted to end the evening. But was it too soon? In the span of one night, his best friend had become his girlfriend. It was a lot to process. And his heart had become nothing short of a coronary ping pong ball—in his throat one minute and in his lower abdomen the next.

The worst part was his inability to read Watts. Quite often, she could be like a suit of armor—completely impermeable. Normally, it wasn't a big deal, but in that particular moment, it mattered. It mattered a lot. She was fidgety, which meant that she was probably as nervous as he was. Beyond that, though, he couldn't hazard a guess as to a single thought that she was having.

Keith's eyes made a smooth circuit around Watts' bedroom. With her drum set in one corner and her bed shoved in the other, nothing had changed. The room was exactly the same as the last time he'd been there. Only now, the implication of her bedroom was different.

When Watts dropped onto the mattress and pulled him toward her, that certainly took on a new implication, as well. Trying to appear relaxed, Keith swallowed his anxiety—or attempted to—and sat down on the bed beside her. It's what he would have done when they were exclusively friends. Perhaps it was best to stick with the familiar.

"What time do you need to be home?" she asked, toying with the fingers of his right hand.

"I told them I'd be late. They won't check on me until morning."

"So, can you, um, stay?" she asked. "If it's what you want, that is."

Now, she definitely sounded nervous, and that smoothed over some of Keith's anxiety. If Watts was out of sorts, too, that meant he wasn't an island. "Yeah. That's what I want," he told her.

"I mean, we don't have to do anything. Just, you know, sleep."

"Well," he said, smiling as he inched closer to her. "Maybe a little more than sleep." Like kissing. He wanted more kissing. Watts certainly knew her way around a lip lock. And Keith absolutely did not want to think about how she'd developed that particular proficiency.

"I don't want this to be awkward," she muttered.

"Then, stop talking about it," he laughed, feeling his emotional equilibrium returning as they traipsed into familiar territory. Watts was overthinking things. That, at least, was a side of her he recognized. Gently, he nudged her back onto the pillow and propped himself up on an elbow beside her. He knew her mind, and he knew that it was unlikely to shut itself off easily.

"Hey, it's just us," he told her, hoping that would calm them both down.

"Yeah, and we know everything about each other," she said, her lips curved into an ambivalent half smile that he interpreted as uncertainty.

"Why does that have to be a bad thing?"

"It doesn't," she admitted. "But it means that I know your first kiss was with Stacey Stear in the seventh grade."

"And I know that yours was with that exchange student from El Salvador."

"Juan," she supplied.

"Juan," he repeated with a sneer and an eye roll. "I never liked that guy."

"Yeah, well, a girl's gotta start somewhere," she insisted. "I also know that you went to second base with that skank, Sheila Morris, last year after the homecoming game."

"She wasn't that skanky," he protested.

"Oh, please, Keith." She pressed her hand again his chest. "Any girl wearing a g-string and a mini skirt with a back slit is a skank. Don't even try to deny it."

He didn't bother. Watts did have a point. "Well, what about you and that guy who worked concessions at the movie theatre?"

"You mean Free Popcorn Dave?" She shrugged. "He wasn't so bad."

"Until he made the mistake of asking you to go with him to his sister's ballet recital," Keith reminded her.

"Yeah, I don't do family engagements. I'm not exactly the kind of girl that a guy brings home to meet the family. Mothers hate me."

"My mother doesn't hate you."

"She will. Just wait 'til she finds out that we're . . . ."

"Together?" he suggested, wetting his lips and slowly closing in on the inevitable.

"Yeah, together," she agreed, sliding closer as she intertwined one of her legs with his. "So, you're really staying the night?"

Keith nodded, feeling blissfully ensnared. How had they never gone down this road before? It felt so right. "Yeah, I'm staying the night," he whispered, eyeing her lips hungrily.

"Good," she breathed into the tiny space between them. "Because I like having you here."