Intuitively, proximate futures expressions pick out a close future event, such as be about to in "Christina is about to go to the store." This paper introduces properties of proximate futures which differentiate them from other future-denoting constructions, such as be going to (bgt). Although in some cases be about to and bgt's meanings overlap, be about to is far more restricted than bgt. It is argued that proximate futures, such as English's be about to, must be analyzed independently from bgt-like constructions. Such proximate future constructions are analyzed as expressing a non-modal perfective aspectual head that denotes a preparation state for some contextually close future event. This proposal successfully captures the unique properties of be about to-like proximate futures as well as introduces future avenues of research into proximate future reference.