there is no need to lock the row, since you a dealing with a shopping cart, not individual item piece. when you run aggregate functions, lock is no needed, it is actually better to run it with SET TRANSACTION ISOLATION LEVEL READ UNCOMMITTED; for aggregation

the check for oversold items is extremely cheap:

  with current_order as (
    select $SKU1, $q2 as quantity
    union
    select $SKU2, $q2 as quantity
  ),
  with carts as (
    select sku, sum(quantity) as reserved
    from active_carts
    group by sku
  ),
  with warehouse as (
    select sku, available_units
    from inventory
    group by sku
  )
  select * from current_order
  inner join carts using (sku)
  inner join warehouse using (sku)
  where warehouse.available_units - carts.reserved < current_order.quantity

assuming there are indexes on sku field in both, results in efficient index seek and agg over 2 tables